Doping cheat-turned-whistle blower Yuliya Stepanova is “very welcome” at the European Athletics Championships, track and field’s continental chief insisted yesterday.
Stepanova received a two-year ban from the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) in 2013 after abnormalities showed up in her biological passport.
But in 2014, she and her husband Vitaly Stepanov, who had worked at the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), appeared in a German television documentary as whistle blowers of widespread doping fraud in the Russian sports system.
Following the startling revelations, which have since plunged the IAAF into its worst-ever crisis and seen Russia banned, the Stepanovs left Moscow for Germany and have since settled in the United States.
The IAAF Doping Review Board unanimously accepted Stepanova’s application, “seeking exceptional eligibility, to compete in international competition as a neutral athlete”.
She will now make her controversial return to competition at the Euros in Amsterdam, with round one of the women’s 800m scheduled for today.
“She has been cleared by the IAAF taskforce to be able to compete if she was cleared by the anti-doping review board,” European Athletics president Svein Arne Hansen told reporters yesterday.
“She’s a symbol to the clean athletes. With her brave statements and brave actions, she’s really going out there to protect our sport.
“We are happy to see her here. She is treated like every other athlete, there’s nothing special.
“She’s very welcome because she’s done a great job for the sport,” Hansen said of the 30-year-old who has been vilified in her native Russia, with critics also rounding on the IAAF for seemingly rewarding a former doping cheat.
The IAAF banned the Russian athletics federation from international competition in November, but 68 athletes have formally requested to be allowed to compete at the Rio Olympics under special criteria.
Hansen hinted he would be more than willing to accept Russian athletes in Amsterdam should they be cleared by the IAAF.
“The IAAF doping review board are still working very hard,” he said.
“If they clear some athletes tonight or tomorrow morning, we’re very happy to see them at the European championships.
“Clean athletes are always welcome.”
But France’s Renelle Lamotte, the leading European woman over 800m this season with a best of 1:58.01, said that she did not agree with Stepanova’s return to competition.
“I am against the fact that athletes who once doped can come back. Whether they denounced the system or not, it’s an injustice,” she said.
French federation president and IAAF Council member Bernard Amsalem, however, praised Stepanova as a “courageous woman who dared to speak out”.
“She’s a symbol of the fight against doping, something to which athletics is totally committed, and an example other sports would do well to follow.”