Updated: June 18, 2016
Here’s a follow-up to the original post. The IAAF extends the Russian Track and Field Ban:
The report detailed a “deeply rooted culture of cheating at all levels” of Russian athletics and implicated athletes, coaches, doctors, laboratory personnel and government officials.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/06/17/sport/russia-doping-iaaf/
When Tai Babilonia and I were competing as a pair team back in the 1970’s, there was a new trend of pair skating coming out of the iron curtain – the Mutt and Jeff pair teams, where the young man was anywhere from 5’10” – 6 feet tall and his young female partner would be around 5 feet tall. The man would be an average of about 23 yrs. old, his partner 14 yrs, or so they said.
They were the little girls with mustaches, given special “vitamins” to build strength and keep up with their stronger male partner. They’d be around for about one season or two, and then “poof,” they were gone, never to be heard from or seen again, while the male partner would come back with a new female partner the next year, an almost carbon copy of the previous one.
Sometimes the athletes in both winter and summer sports would be caught by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) , sometimes not. Last November, the entire Russian Track and Field team was suspended after an investigation with what they called, “a culture of cheating.” And it even goes further back through to the Sochi Winter Olympics with an investigation underway involving all the Russian winter athletes, including figure skating.
Yuliya Rusanova speaks of her days competing in the London Summer Games in the 800 Meters interviewed with her husband, Vitaly Steponov in this revealing, truthful and compelling piece on 60 Minutes.
RG
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