Countering doping in sport.
Question: Mr
Medvedev, a question from Rossiya TV Channel. How are we preparing for the
Olympics in view of the anti-doping investigations and everything else going on
in sport?
Dmitry Medvedev: The athletes are getting ready, certain decisions have been made, there are certain technologies.
As to the anti-doping situation, it is very heated and media-spun. I would only mention the recent decisions announced by the President a short while ago. We will place emphasis on regulatory decisions targeting doping, making it impermissible to use substances which give athletes a competitive advantage in violation of the law.
In order to implement these tasks, several laws have been drafted, including a draft law which is currently in the State Duma and has passed the first reading. The draft law criminalises certain activities related to inducing an athlete to use doping or other banned substances by coaches, medical specialists, or the use of similar substances in a situation when the athlete is unaware of it. This is just a part of the problem.
By the way, at a President’s recent meeting with the Government certain other amendments to legislation were considered, such as penal procedures for those cases to have better legal enforcement, operative enforcement. That way we will always see what happened and where, and nobody will be able to say that some actions were not recorded.
But this is a matter of the future. I also think it important to pay attention to the work of the anti-doping centre since this is the office that deals with the issues of using respective substances and with anti-doping investigations. This office is under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Sport, that is, it is part of the federal executive bodies. For the anti-doping centre to have greater freedom and to dispel any doubts, we could consider moving it away from the supervision of the federal executive bodies and turn it, for instance, into an autonomous agency or another structure, thus lifting all doubts regarding government control over processes in sport.
I think it is crucial that such organisations should be headed by people with spotless reputations. That has great importance in the world of sport and in the world in general. If such a decision were taken, I think it right for this agency to be headed by a person of integrity from the world of sport or from other circles whose reputation, let me repeat it, is beyond any reproach. We shall think about it as well as about some additional decisions that could be taken in this area.
