Sport is still rife with doping

AS OLYMPICS GOWADA, the 2020 games, scheduled to start in Tokyo on July 23rd, are shaping up to be among the strangest in the competition’s history. Because of covid-19, even their name is out of date, for they are taking place a year late. And contagion-prevention means most stadiums will be empty of spectators, so events will take place in funereal silence.The 2020 games will be unusual in another way, too. They will be the first summer games since 1984’s—which were boycotted by the Soviet Union—at which Russia will not be present, at least officially. Though some of its athletes will participate as individuals, under the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee, the national team has been banned in the aftermath of one of the biggest doping scandals in the history of sport. Between 2011 and 2015, and possibly for longer, Russia systematically doped hundreds of athletes. It roped in its spy agencies to subvert the anti-doping tests overseen by the World Anti-Doping Agency (), then fabricated data as part of an attempt to get back into the authorities’ good books. A controversial court ruling last year reduced Russia’s initial four-year ban to two, which will expire in 2022.