On the same day that a damning report was published on systematic doping in international athletics, the chairman of the German Football League resigned over a bribery scandal which it is alleged secured the 2006 FIFA World Cup for Germany. There are two distinct trails of scandal here. The football fixing is only part of the larger investigation into what, it is now clear, was massive corruption at the headquarters of football's world governing body under the lengthy presidency of Sepp Blatter. It now seems clear that money also changed hands for the award of the 2010 FIFA World Cup to South Africa and allegations, strenuously denied by Moscow, have also been made that payola influenced FIFA's choice of Russia for the 2018 World Cup. The second trail of scandal relating to the organized doping of athletes also unfortunately leads to Moscow. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has accused Russia of a "deeply-rooted culture of cheating." After the Second World War, athletes from Communist bloc countries became highly suspect. Females in field events, for instance, had the bodies and features of males, and it was widely thought that this was due to the fact that they had been pumped full of drugs to enhance their strength. For many years these women athletes were throwing discuses and javelins and shots extraordinary distances, which could not be matched by their competitors. The move by the world governing body of athletics, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), to introduce an anti-doping regime began to weed out the individual cheats. But the misgiving remained that some countries in search of Olympic gold-medal glory were prepared to go to extraordinary lengths to cheat. This is what WADA has accused the Russians of doing, even suggesting that officers from the FSB intelligence agency threatened the Russian Athletics Federation and its doping-testers. Moreover, WADA is saying that Russia bribed IAAF officials to rig or ignore dubious test results. It is being asserted that Russian coaches instructed promising athletes to take performance-enhancing drugs as a matter of course. Those who refused were dropped from the program. Before foreign competitions, where there was a greater likelihood of doping testers spotting the cheats, Russian athletes were checked to see if their drugs levels were too high. If they were, they were simply not sent to that athletics meeting. Because the Russian Athletics Federation itself is supposed to have been involved, it is possible for the IAAF to suspend it from membership. That would mean that no Russian athletes could compete anywhere including next year's Rio Olympics. Moscow of course regards this as yet another Western plot and denies that systemic cheating has taken place. WADA, which has said that there is extensive cheating in other countries, is due to publish the results of the second part of its inquiry. The Russians are saying that the United States and the UK will also have some difficult questions to answer. If indeed the athletics federation in either country were also found to be guilty of systematic doping of contestants, it would be a major embarrassment. The bottom line, however, is that wherever and whenever it occurs, cheating has to be driven out of sport. All sportsmen really must be competing on a level playing field, otherwise what they do is absolutely meaningless.
