Rio Olympics – Declan Hill – Investigative Journalist & Academic

09AugAugust 9, 2017

Fixing Wrestling, Academics and the Olympics

As the sporting world wrestles with yet more revelations of doping at the Olympics, an excellent analysis of alleged corruption in the Rio Olympics wrestling tournament has been published by the fight website www.flowrestling.com I single out their articles for a couple of reason. First, to a neutral reader the idea of 'fixing' and 'wrestling' being in the same sentence is hardly surprising. What is unusual is that this not professional wrestling but Olympic wrestling: purportedly the highest form of...

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...

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...