Vitaly Mutko launched an incredible defence of Russian sport on the day of the World Cup draw, insisting there was “no proof” of systematic doping in the country.
Mutko, a deputy prime minister of Russia, will play a key role in Friday’s draw as the head of the Russian Football Association but he used a one-hour long address to the world’s media predominantly to launch a diatribe against his critics.
Mutko was sports minister at a time when a World Anti-Doping Agency commissioned report determined that Russian athletes were part of a systematic doping programme. They were found to have manipulated the anti-doping programme at the Sochi Olympics by tampering with test tubes, replacing dirty urine samples with clean ones.
“People are checking for scratches on the test tubes?” he said, “Well, do that in the rest of the world and there’ll be scratches all over the place.”
The New York Times this week published diaries of the whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov, a former head of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory. They suggested Mutko knew all about the systematic doping programme but he took a swipe at the paper, claiming it was behaving like a “press service” of the International Olympic Committee. The IOC will rule next week on Russia’s participation at the Pyeongchang winter Olympics next year.
“We don’t know what the IOC is going to say; we hope that common sense will prevail,” said Mutko,“There is a charter; an IOC charter. We believe that the presumption of innocence is a principle that has not been validated by anybody. This collective punishment seems to be in fashion these days.
“I’m happy to go to any court, to any disciplinary committee,” he added, “to anyone and I’ll be happy to talk about how there has never been and will never be any state programmes related to doping in this country.”
Michel D’Hooghe, the chairman of the Fifa medical committee, confirmed Russian authorities would have no part in the anti-doping programme at next summer’s tournament.
“The anti-doping control will be done by medical officers of Fifa not Russia, nothing will be in the hands of the Russian organisers,” he said, “With the rumours around Russia it’s one reason more to say we give nothing of the doping control to Russian doctors, to the Russian authorities, to the local organising committee.”
