In an era where nothing happens by accident, the Russian Swimming Federation has added a prominent logo for the World Anti-Doping Organization (WADA) to the top of its home page.
On November 9th, the World Anti-Doping Agency released a report condemning doping in Russian sport, stating that it believed that it was being employed in the country on a state-sponsored level. While most of the broader conversation has been focused on the country’s athletics federation (track & field), Russian Swimming also has a recent record of a very high rate of doping violations.
While Russian swimming has not stated that adding the WADA logo, with a link to a landing page documenting all of the federation’s anti-doping efforts, was in direct response to the WADA report, the link was not there in its current prominence as of November 3rd – the last edition of the site archived by the Internet Archive Project.
The page linked below keeps a running list of information regarding the latest developments in Russia’s anti-doping program, as well as a list of informatinoa bout recently suspended swimmers.
While Russian Athletics have been provisionally suspended by their international governing body (IAAF), FINA has not sanctioned the Russian swimming federation. Instead, their statement focused on what steps they have taken to ensure that testing was accurate both at the 2015 World Aquatics Championships, hosted in Russia, and in out-of-competition testing. FINA has not specifically addressed the rate of doping suspensions that have come from Russian swimmers.
WADA logo on the front page?
Well, everything seems to be in order here. Nothing to see, folks!
Did FINA ever get round to issuing an official response in regards to the implicated doping by Russian swimmers and the involvement of coaches in the Hajo Seppelt documentary? (Which can be found on YouTube with English subtitles for those that haven’t yet seen it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu9B-ty9JCY)
I don’t think so, but they did get around to awarding their highest honor to Vladimir Putin.