Russian Doping & Fixing: A Normal Way of Business

In the light of Richard McLaren's report on doping in Russia.  Here is a backgrounder from The Fix on corruption in Russian sports.  Kaliningrad is a grim, grey city stuck at the far western end of Russia. It is full of crumbling dockyards, high unemployment, and mobsters. The city is an odd outpost of the remains of the Soviet Empire. It is a Russian Baltic port, completely cut off from the rest of country and wedged between Lithuania and...

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Sports and the Russian Mafia

On the news that the Russian track and field athletes are banned from the Rio Olympics. Good decision. Two points, five lessons and the links between sports and the Russian Mafia. The Russian anti-doping system in sport was largely a sham: a Potemkin village of a program designed to give the appearance of an effective fight but in reality enabling widespread doping among their athletes. At the very heart of athleticism and the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) that was a...

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