If you insist on starting each new year with a sense of childlike wonderment, you will be stunned by news that Russia has missed the New Year’s Eve deadline to allow the World Anti-Doping Agency access to the Moscow lab at the heart of its massive state-sponsored doping programme.
This development is also incredible to wide-eyed Wada president Craig Reedie, who professes himself “bitterly disappointed”, while the head of Usada brands the situation “a total joke”. The latter verdict feels the more realistic. Back in November, Sir Craig justified his recommendation that Russia be readmitted to international competition, despite them having not met his organisation’s own conditions for that to happen. “I find it very hard to believe,” he found it very hard to believe, “that the guarantees, made to us by the Russian authorities, that they won’t deliver.”
Written by Marina Hyde
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/jan/02/inconceivable-russia-yet-again-leave-sir-craig-reedie-looking-the-fool-wada-drugs-in-sport-athletics under the title “Inconceivable! Russia yet again leave Sir Craig Reedie looking the fool | Marina Hyde”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
