Sport security

WADA heard of Russian doping in 2010, didn’t investigate until media reports

At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, a whistleblower approached three officials with the World Anti-Doping Agency, the global organization that combats drug cheating in sports. Vitaliy Stepanov was a disillusioned Russian anti-doping agent, and in several meetings with WADA officials held in the Olympic Village in February 2010, he detailed how drug cheating was endemic among Russia’s Olympic athletes and how the government and Russia’s anti-doping agency were complicit.

For four years after those first meetings, Stepanov exchanged hundreds of emails with WADA employees, but the rules-enforcing agency never opened an investigation into Russia’s alleged rule-breaking. Finally, in early 2014, a senior WADA official, convinced his agency would never pursue the claims, directed Stepanov to contact a German journalist, in the hopes that the journalist would investigate them, according to Stepanov and a person familiar with the case who spoke on condition of anonymity.