Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova says she shouldn’t be punished a second time for a doping ban she served five years ago, and that Olympic bans should be applied equally to non-Russian athletes with prior doping violations.
Efimova spoke to Russia’s state-sponsored news outlet RT in the wake of WADA’s decision to consider Russia non-compliant for a four-year period. The ruling by WADA will keep Russia as a nation out of major international competitions for the next four years. However, individual Russian athletes will be able to compete, if they can demonstrate they aren’t implicated in the ongoing scandal over a state-run doping program within Russia.
Specifically, WADA says that athletes must show “that they are not mentioned in incriminating circumstances in the McLaren reports, there are no positive findings reported for them in the database and no data relating to their samples has been manipulated.”
Efimova was never reported among those named in the McLaren report. However, she did test positive for DHEA in 2013 and served a two-year ban. She also tested positive for meldonium in 2016, but wasn’t suspended because meldonium was legal through December 2015, and could conceivably have remained in her system through her positive tests in 2016.
It’s not clear in the wording of WADA’s release whether a “positive finding… in the database” refers to any positive test in the past, or merely a positive test in the specific Moscow anti-doping lab database where WADA says data was manipulated. However, if her 2013 positive test is grounds for an Olympic ban under WADA’s policy, the two-time Olympic silver medalist Efimova says she will fight that in court.
“There is a rule that a person can’t be punished twice for the same offence,” Efimova told RT. “If you violate a driving code or instigated a brawl, you will not be punished twice for that.” Efimova says she’s already hired a lawyer to make that case if there is an attempt to ban her from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Efimova also said that if 2020 Olympic bans are being handed out for past violations, the same rules should apply to athletes from every nation, not just Russia:
“If you introduce those rules, they must be applied to all athletes,” Efimova said. “Yes, long ago I made a doping violation and I was disqualified for almost two years. But there are a great number of US and European athletes who have a similar situation regarding doping and they are competing without any restrictions. If you want to introduce those regulations, they must be equally applied to all athletes, not only Russian competitors.”
Disregard Meldonium entirely.
An athlete who was popped for an endogenous steroid in an out-of-competition test should NOT be the poster child for athletes wrongly persecuted after a nation has demonstrated they have no Anti-Doping Agency and are not conducting out-of-competition tests appropriately.
she should get an exemption, strictly based on being a smokeshow
Hi everyone again,
there is another issue to be discussed – TUEs.
US athletes get them the most.
Year 2016:
USA – 398!
Italy – 372!
France – 207
Australia – 133
Canada – 78
Germany – 75
Russia – 15
One remarkable case: Serena Williams had once 6 TUEs. Just look how innocent Serena looks.
It seems just another type of lobbyism or even mafia, doesn’t it?
If you are ill, just go get treated.
How an ill person can become no. 1 in competition with healthy people?
Was serna’s tue related to her pregnancy and the substantial complications that followed it?
She is using TUEs since 2010 at least
Maybe we should take a look who was getting these TUE’s in the US? Out of these 398 only 128 were issued to national and international level athletes in all sports. The rest went to regular guys. After that 128 vs 15 doesn’t look too bad.
By the way, is there some kind of epidemy going on between Russian athletes? There is 250% spike in TUE requests in Russia since 2014.
250% increase would still be under 50 in total, bro.
It is a topic Russians feel they are not treated fairly.
Especially keeping in mind their winter competitors from Norway (nearly everyone is getting TUEs due to “asthma”) and summer competitors from the US etc.
The rules must be equal for everyone. Without any exception. Otherwise they are not rules, but licenses – some people would get them and the rest would not
Bro, you know, the US and Russia populations are slightly different too. So, what is the situation, are more and more Russian athletes getting sick every year? I am seriously concerned.
What do you mean with “different”, bro?
You mean the US population is more ill?
If I look at Serena I doubt a bit your statements, bro
The size, comrade. If Russian athletes are healthy as ever, why do they need more TUEs after state-sponsored doping scheme got busted?
If they look at Serena they doubt they are healthy, bro
I do as well
If we are talking about population, why doesn’t China get at least half as many TUEs as US? They also have a large number of athletes participating in every Olympics.
Exactly.
There is also a problem that the world is ruled now by lawyers. Mostly by saxon lawyers who studied in Oxford or Harvard.
They write rules first.
Then they expain how to avoid them.
Serena is rich enough to have the best lawyers obviously.
Or take WADA as example. There is no Russian in the comittees. Either Brits or Canadians or from the US. No chance for meldonium, but no risk the North-American analogues
Umm. Maybe because Russia and China are the largest countries where sport is fully funded by state? There is no need to get TUE if you also own the lab. Sun Yang team’s member is also the head of local antidoping authority, which is totally normal, I guess.
What is the role of USADA btw? Do they do their job properly?
The main scandals in the US have been a result of either informing or coming-out (confession?) of the cheaters themselves.
Why can we not count on USADA they are able to test athletes properly?
If you suggest that TUE = PED then your statistics of official TUEs can be used as indication of unofficial usage of PEDs. Let me explain. The person who is going to cheat with PED will no way draw the attention to himself with TUE. In Russia the country where population lives in highly populated environment and where the public medical service is in trouble the 15 only cases of TUE is obvious outliner.
PED belong to the Russian past and to the reputation of Russia but not to the present time any longer since Rodchenkov run away.
There is no scandal with PED in the last 4 years.
All the scandals are about the same data from 2014-2015 only
Ok. Let it be. But this 15 cases is very suspicious. It is either Russian athletes are not familiar with the procedure of registering officially prescribed drugs they are on. Or Russian genotype is unique in regards that Russian athletes are exceptionally healthy people. Or there are not that many people in Russia who are participating in competitive sport.
I think that none of explanation listed above are taking place. And this huge difference between American TUE cases (398) and Russian ones (15) requires serious study.
And of course, we don’t know and you don’t provide the source of this information and how reliable it is. I seriously suspect that it comes from Russian website that can publish… Read more »
Given how commonly strong pain relief and steroidal anti-inflammatories (the 2 classes of drugs prescribed to Serena) are prescribed I find it hard to believe that only 15 Russian athletes needed TUEs but I guess if RUSADA is so lax they need not bother getting a TUE. Also receiving a TUE doesn’t mean they get to take a drug continuously; Most of them are episodal such as prescribed short term for an injury or infection.
The only thing about this list that stands out is how remarkably low Russia’s number is.
My concern is: if something depends on some people’s subjective decision and not on objective rules, there is still a lot of space for cheating.
Look at German and Italian numbers.
Both countries are well developed in healthcare and sport medicine, but we all know we would expect cheating rather from Italians than Germans (sorry Italians for saying that, but I love you however).
Or take economics as example. Democratic developed countries are known for low numbers of any licenses or permissions needed to do some business and there are lot of licenses or permissions needed in developing countries – which is one of reasons for corruption there
Don’t be mad at WADA – be mad at the Russian officials who put a cloud over your entire sports franchise.
Or, blame it all on Ukraine.
She refers to US and European athletes. How about China? Boo me out, but after ’94 Rome they should have been banned for ever on the same ground. She makes a point though, but not too much precise or authentic.
Why US and European?
There is another issue obvious for me for instance – the level of domestic pharmaceutical industry.
Russia – thanks Putin – ruined its own industry and uses either old soviet medicine (like meldonium created in 1970) or modern made in the US or Europe.
What is definition for doping? Doping are drugs which are included in the WADA list, not just drugs which enhance your perfomance.
It means all the newest drugs have a chance to be banned by WADA after several years they have been launched on the market only. And as proven by Rodchenkov, even after that you need several years to learn to manage testing them properly.
TUEs are another issue. Check how many TUEs have been approved for the US athletes. Serena Willaims was allowed to take 6 (!) drugs. If you are ill take a break from competitons. It is strange ill people become the best in competing with healthy people
Ironically, apparently, they are more than 400 top American athletes on TUE WADA(US friendly) approved medications eg the Williams, Simone Biles and etc,
I mean the latest products might be available for domestic athletes even before launching them on the market
TUEs are another issue. Check how many TUEs have been approved for the US athletes. Serena Williams was allowed to take 6 (!) drugs. If you are ill take a break from competitons. It is strange ill people become the best in competing with healthy people
I’m sure more than half of current Chinese National team swimmers weren’t even born in 94. If we follow the same logic, Germany should also be banned forever for what they did in the 20th century.
My reply with more recent examples was moderated out. And we are guessing at non-equality in sports. That’s rich…
An individual violating the rules is the not the same as a country cheating on the government level which is what Russia does
You accept cheaters in the sports, but not in a government.
Unfortunately we cannot change our government. Neither me nor Efimova. Since its a dictatorship. (BTW they learned to cheat during elections. So they became sure cheating would have no censequenses)
But why should athletes be responsible for the cheating out of their responsibility? Especially swimmers who mostly train outside of Russia?
If only things were so simple.
I think while out of context her argument makes sense, her take isn’t appropriate in this situation. The issue was that the Moscow lab that was supposed to be catching cheaters, was instead creating them, and they were caught. They were given a certain time to right their wrongs, and instead more data disappeared (incriminating sample of those not caught yet, which triggered the most recent talks of ban for upcoming events). In my eyes, the issue now is that because of the actions of this lab, it became virtually impossible to find those cheaters. If Russia is not banned, these tainted athletes will find their way to medals in 2020 and beyond. I think it’s common sense to believe… Read more »
Hear hear
So did Alex Popov cheat?
Unpopular opinion: she’s got a point