By Dmitry Babich
Here is something I don't understand. How could Sebastian Coe's and Philippe Craven's positive reactions to the report accusing Russia of doping come so fast?
The new report accusing the Russian athletes of doping was prepared by the so called "Independent Person" named Richard McLaren (not an athlete, but a Canadian lawyer) was published Friday morning.
Then how come the top persons in IAAF (International Association of Athletic Federations) agreed with the report 100 percent minutes after its publication - the positive reaction from IAAD came before 11 a.m.? Obviously, the formerly fastest runners on the planet Earth have to be also the fastest readers. Otherwise they would not be able to read 140 pages in less than an hour. Let us remind the readers that it was IAAF that imposed this summer a blanket ban on the Russian track-and-field federation, barring ALL the Russian runners and jumpers from coming to the Games in Rio. The "non-participants" included the Olympic champion in pole-jumping Yelena Isinbayeva and other Russian athletes, who had never failed their doping tests. Several American athletes with doping history were allowed to go to Rio - just because they belonged to a different national team than the Russian ones.
The text reviewing McLaren's report published by the NYT, The Guardian and The Irish Times - this text was the same word for word on th websites of all of these three newspapers. The Irish Times attributed it to some "Guardian Service" (whatever that means). The text, obviously prepared in advance of the report’s publication, quotes the president of IAAF Sebastian Coe as praising the report (and himself) - minutes after the McLaren's report was released to the public. So, Coe obviously gave McLaren a blank check – something Coe was not supposed to do in the name of “integrity” he likes to talk about. It should be noted that “Sir” Coe is an ungrateful champion of the 1980 Games in Moscow, where he was allowed to participate despite the British-American boycott of those games. 36 years later Coe became the key figure in barring Russians from going to Rio.
“The IAAF has been at the forefront of anti-doping since 1928 when we were the first international federation to prohibit doping in sport. We will continue to test intelligently, retest smartly, work collaboratively and seek swift justice. The independent Athletics Integrity Unit launching in April 2017 will give us, and clean athletes the world over, the strongest platform possible to deliver this,” the IAAF’s statement said, and it was happily and uncritically quoted by leading Western newspapers said.
How come the International Paralympic Committee said (also a few minutes after the publication) that the report's findings are "unprecedented and astonishing" and that their committee "wholeheartedly agrees with Professor McLaren"? In the Soviet Union, as the famous joke goes, people said at official rallies the phrases like "we have not read Pasternak, but we condemn his anti-Soviet work." In the modern US, the EU and Canada, people agree with reports without having read them. Typical.
So, why does Western media blindly believe the integrity of the “professor” who ruined the lives of a few dozens disabled persons and a few more hundreds of the young healthy athletes? Because otherwise there will be questions not only about the integrity of WADA, but also of the Western media itself.
“After all, it was WADA’s responsibility to protect the urine samples and other elements of the anti-doping program during the Sochi games,” Alexey Osin, the sports commentator of the liberal Ekho Moskvy radio station said on Friday evening. “Also, it was the responsibility of a Western company Berlinger Special AG to make the bottles which would be tamper-proof. They promised to do it and, if we believe Mr. McLaren, they failed. But how come that same company continues to supply bottles for all other major sporting events supervised by WADA? In this way, they provide the ground for disqualification of all the athletes using these bottles, not just Russians.”
So, the Western mainstream media is quickly giving full credence to hasty comments from Coe, the International Paralympic Committee, which disgraced itself by barring all the Russian disabled athletes from the games in Rio, etc.
Again, this is the same situation as the one with “universal condemnation” by Soviet citizens of Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago in the late 1950s.
The only difference is that the proletarians who condemned Pasternak did not have any effect on Pasternak's health and career. McLaren, IAAF with Coe and the International Paralympic Committee barred hundreds of people with clean doping records from the Olympic games. They damaged these people's careers and health. So, their “simplicitas” is even ‘sancta’ than the naïve anger of unenlightened Soviet critics of Pasternak.