The Rio Olympics anti-doping program was "successful despite a lack of trained staff and resources," the IOC said on Friday following a World Anti-Doping Agency report noting "serious failings" in the process, according to Karolos Grohmann of REUTERS. The IOC said that the overall program had been successful, "despite the lack of trained staff and inadequate testing outlined in the WADA international observers (IO) report." The IOC said, "The anti-doping programme in Rio de Janeiro had to overcome some challenges too, such as a lack of resources and trained volunteers/staff." The 55-page WADA report by its IO team had said on Thursday that several athletes earmarked for testing "simply could not be found" while there was "little or no in-competition blood testing in many high-risk sports" at the Games. The IOC said that the program had "nevertheless delivered." IOC Medical Chief Richard Budgett said, "The IOC report shows that it was a successful Olympic Games with a successful anti-doping program" (REUTERS, 10/28).
WHITEWASHING: In London, Andy Bull opined on Friday morning, the IOC released a statement welcoming that same report which, it says, "shows that it was a successful Olympic Games with a successful anti-doping programme." However, the IOC’s press department "seems to have been the only media body who decided that the headline takeaway from the report was that everything is tickety-boo." The rest of the world’s press "were rather more preoccupied with other little details, like the fact that more than a third of athletes competing in Rio were not subjected to drugs testing" before the Games in '16 and that, of those, 1,913 were competing in one of the 10 “high-risk sports.” Or that there was "no out-of-competition testing for some events, limited in-competition testing in others and no in-competition blood testing in a third group, including weightlifting." Taken altogether, the report "reads like something Joseph Heller might have cooked up if he had set out to write a satirical novel about institutional incompetence in the Olympics instead of the air force" (GUARDIAN, 10/28).
