Richard McLaren – Declan Hill – Investigative Journalist & Academic

05NovNovember 5, 2019

Strategic Deception and the Sporting World

How the UNODC and IOC have created a movement that purports to fight sports corruption but actually puts it in reverse. ”The West are wishful thinkers, we will give them what they want to think…” Feliks Dzerzhinsky - Founder of the Soviet Spy Services Back in the day, things were not going well for the Russian Bolsheviks. It was 1919, they were nominally in power in the newly established, Soviet Russia, but really were losing a land war to their bitter enemies...

06FebFebruary 6, 2018

The Russian Olympic Doping File

It is a slow-moving disaster than penalizes clean athletes and rewards a dirty system. Welcome to the Russian state sponsored doping saga, episode number 58. ** Here is some context. For those readers who do not follow the fast, exciting world of winter sports in the Virgin Islands – the beach training is intense and the air conditioning can be very cold – you may have missed the sad news of Ms. Kathryn Tannenbaum, the skeleton sledder from those temperate isles. Skeleton sledding is...

05DecDecember 5, 2017

Suspicious Games in the Champions League & the Great Olympic Scandal

Interesting week in international sports. Lets start with the Champions League where once again we have a ‘choke-point’ where games are regularly fixed. Here is the scenario. You are a UEFA investigator. The rest of the world thinks that you have unlimited resources and money coming out of your elbows. You know that if you’re lucky, the system will give you a bent paper clip and an elastic band for resources to stop corruption in Europe’s premier competition – the Champions...

23FebFebruary 23, 2017

The Cold War Spy Games Inside Sports

As the world fixates on Russian spying and cyber-attacks in U.S. politics, the field of sports has been struck by similar intrusions and Canadian athletes and organizations are among the hardest hit. The Montreal-based World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was warned last summer that Russian hackers were trying to breach its computer system, according to security officials and computer experts who requested anonymity to discuss the matter. The agency’s former director general, David Howman, who reported that he received death threats during...

14DecDecember 14, 2016

Canada’s Pride

Its nice to be able to write a story where the Canadian sports officials are not burying their heads in the sand or passing the hot potato of accountability as quickly as possible. This is an exclusive interview with Richard McLaren, the Canadian sports lawyer who investigated the state-sponsored Russian doping system. Richard McLaren announcing the results of his investigation into Russian state-sponsored doping It is the Lance Armstrong scandal meets Kremlin Cold War politics, with some underhanded KGB tactics thrown...

10NovNovember 10, 2015

7 lessons from the IAAF and Russian Doping Scandals

So now we know. Now we know that 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. Now we know that at the very heart of athleticism and the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) that was a deeply corrupted system that enabled doping athletes and coaches. Here are the lessons that we can learn: 1) The myth...