The latest words spoken about the Doping scandal which hit Russia are alarming and somewhat incredible.
The one to speak, this time, was the ex-boss of the Russian Antidoping (RUSADA) Ramil Khabriev, who revealed: “The doping problem in Russia is clearly severe and this cannot be denied. We have the highester number of antidoping rules violations compared to other countries and this clearly shows how serious the problem is.
It is even ore alarming that almost 40% of these violations come from young peoples; even at this level trainers addressed to the use of doping to obtain results, even for local competitions.”
Ramil Khabriev’s words find a sad validation if we think that, only few days ago, the 21 y.o. racewalker Alena Kudashkina was banned.
Despite this the Sport Minister Vitaly Mutko keeps releasing statements on a defensive and optimistic line talking about how, in this very moment, RUSADA and the whole Russian system are progressing towards regularization; but if the doping use reaches youngsters, even underage ones, the problem switches to ethics and to sport culture: until which points the health of a boy/girl has to be sacrificed in order to reach some goals?
Maybe, rather than RUSADA or Russian federation, this kind of mentality will the be the hardest thing to change.