Yulia Efimova: An Olympian and a Doper
Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova is only welcome at the Rio Olympics in the official sense. That is, the IOC and FINA, swimming’s governing body, are allowing her to compete. Otherwise, nobody wants her in Rio, and they aren’t ashamed to make that clear.
Efimova is a convicted doper. In fact, she has been caught twice — once in 2013 and, again, earlier this year. As a result, her presence on the starting blocks in Rio has touched an angry nerve in the swimming community. The fans at the Olympic pool have greeted every announcement of her name with a torrent of boos. And her opponents have been equally merciless, the most outspoken being 19 year-old American Lilly King, who defeated Efimova Monday night to win the 100 meter breaststroke. King, who earlier admitted she was “not a fan” of Efimova, punctuated her victory by glaring at the Russian and refusing to shake her hand. In a post-race interview, she added that her win struck a blow for clean athletes. Other swimmers, including Olympic legend Michael Phelps, have publicly backed King’s stance.
So given her two positive tests, a nearly invisible list of friends and the doping scandal engulfing Russian athletics, how was Efimova able to compete in Rio at all? The answer raises questions about whether FINA takes Russia’s doping problems as seriously as the federations governing other sports.
In 2013, FINA suspended Efimova for 16 months after she tested positive for DHEA, a banned steroid. Efimova served her suspension and became eligible to compete again in February 2015.
Earlier this year, Efimova tested positive again. This time, the drug was meldonium, which had only been placed on the World Anti-Doping Agency’s banned list on January 1, 2016. Efimova claimed that she took meldonium before it was banned and that the substance remained in her body until after the ban took effect. To an extent, FINA and WADA bought this rationale. Due to the high amount of positive meldonium tests (124 in just 8 months), WADA determined that it would need more time to study how long the drug remained in a person’s body after usage. In turn, FINA temporarily lifted any meldonium bans until WADA’s study was complete. For Efimova, this result was fortuitous, as lifting her ban would allow her to compete in Rio.
But on July 24, in response to a WADA report that exposed Russia’s state-sponsored doping program, the IOC imposed new rules for admitting Russian athletes to the Rio games. Two provisions are relevant to Efimova. First, the IOC left it to each sport’s international federation to determine Russian competitors’ eligibility. At the same time, the IOC set forth a series of conditions that Russian athletes would have to meet in order for the federations to approve them. This has led to a hodge podge of results, with some sports, like track and field, barring nearly all of its Russian competitors and others, like boxing and tennis, admitting all of theirs. Second, the IOC banned all Russian athletes who had served previous doping suspensions, even if the suspension had expired. This blanket ban on previous dopers ensnared Efimova, as she had served the 2013 suspension for taking DHEA. So once again, she could not compete in Rio.
Efimova appealed her punishment to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, where her story took another turn. The CAS panel hearing her case ruled that the blanket ban on previous dopers violated natural justice and, therefore, the IOC could not ban Efimova solely based on her 2013 suspension. This decision aligned with one by a different CAS panel the day before, which invalidated the blanket ban when applied to two Russian rowers. Still, like the earlier panel, Efimova’s panel upheld the portion of the IOC’s decree leaving it to the international federations to determine eligibility. This meant FINA would have to decide whether Efimova could compete.
On August 7, FINA did just that, reinstating Efimova and six other Russian swimmers. The federation offered no public explanation for doing so. Rather, it quietly revised the Olympic starting lists to include the previously banned athletes.
Given the ambiguity in the IOC’s July 24 guidelines, FINA’s decision may be justifiable. Nonetheless, it has taken a softer stance on Russian doping than other international federations.
In its defense, FINA did not clearly refuse to apply the IOC’s July 24 criteria. Outside of the blanket ban (which FINA couldn’t apply), the IOC set forth only one black-and-white condition — that an athlete could not be one of the dopers identified by the WADA report. Efimova was not one of those athletes. The remaining conditions are nebulous, essentially instructing the federations to take the athlete’s entire history and any applicable doping rules (such as the WADA Code) into account. With so little direction, there are reasons to support reinstating Efimova. These include the fact that she is not under any current doping ban, her 2013 doping ban has expired and she has not been accused of any violations beyond the two that have already been addressed.
But FINA’s decision seems to have altered the burden of proof other international federations have used for Russian athletes. In those cases, the federations concluded that the doping scandal tagged Russian athletes with a “collective responsibility.” This meant that they were presumed dopers unless they could demonstrate otherwise. For example, track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, declared all Russian athletes ineligible for the games, but allowed individuals to gain entry by establishing that they were subject to effective testing outside of Russia. Similarly, FISA, the governing body for rowing, declared that, “to rebut the applicability of collective responsibility in his or her individual case, as required by the IOC,” a Russian athlete would have to show a minimum of three clean doping tests, from January 1, 2015 to the present. In short, each Russian athlete bore collective responsibility for the country’s doping scandal, a responsibility he or she could only escape by presenting affirmative evidence of being drug free.
Had FINA examined the issue through this prism, it is doubtful that Efimova would have been allowed to compete. Indeed, regardless of the circumstances, she had two recent positive tests. Even if one doesn’t accept this as evidence she is dirty, she has presented no affirmative evidence that she is clean. So it appears plain that FINA disregarded “collective responsibility” and presumed guilt for a more lenient standard. This opened the door for Efimova’s reinstatement.
Outside of these basic observations, it is difficult to know what spurred FINA to allow Efimova to compete. There was no public explanation. But either way, with all legal roads exhausted, there is nothing left to keep Efimova from her remaining events (the 200 meter breaststroke and, possibly, the 400 meter medley relay). And there is nothing left to keep the swimming community from refusing to welcome her.
