Former investigator calls WADA’s Russia decision ‘cowardly’
At the same time the World Anti-Doping Agency announced changes to its governance structure, the agency’s former lead investigator wrote an op-ed piece arguing its leaders should be replaced, and said the decision to reinstate Russia’s suspended anti-doping agency came via a “cowardly” process that betrayed clean athletes.
Jack Robertson, who led the initial WADA probe into doping inside the Russian sports system, wrote an op-ed that came out during the agency’s leadership meetings this week in Baku, Azerbaijan.
“WADA’s sole reason for existence is to safeguard the rights of clean athletes to fair competition, and yet that has become a secondary concern, when it is a concern at all,” Robertson wrote in an op-ed published on the ITV News website.
He described reluctance at WADA to grapple with the Russian scandal when details first emerged, and said the decision to reinstate RUSADA “is in keeping with WADA’s culture in recent years as it responded to revelations about Russia’s state-sponsored doping program.”