Russia Says RUSADA Doping Admission Was ‘Taken Out Of Context’

Despite yesterday’s report in the New York Times in which Anna Antseliovich, director of Russia’s national anti-doping agency, admitted to widespread doping operations across multiple Olympic Games, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) now claims a misunderstanding concerning the inflammatory comments.

TASS news agency reports that Dmitry Peskov, a spokesperson for the Kremlin, denies state-sponsored doping and says that Antseliovich’s comments to the New York Times yesterday were ‘distorted and taken out of context.’  He also said that there could be no admission of blanket doping as ‘each athlete accused of doping has the right to object to the charges.’

“Unfortunately, [NYT reporter] Rebecca Ruiz has taken these words out of context creating an impression that RUSADA’s top management admits an institutional scheme of covering doping in Russia,” says the RUSADA.

“We’d like to stress that RUSADA does not have and cannot have authority to admit or deny such facts. Russia’s Investigative Committee is conducting an investigation into the matter,” the statement added.

Whereas Antseliovich said yesterday that the systematic doping was an ‘institutional conspiracy’,  RUSADA has now said that the comments were instead referring to the McLaren report findings. The McLaren Report, released this summer, confirmed state-sponsored doping in Russia, dating back to 2010. A 2nd McLaren report was released earlier this month, detailing ‘manipulations to conceal positive tests.’

Names of specific athletes were not released in their entirety, but reports indicate that 10 of the named athletes are volleyball players.