Valieva caught in a complicated mess that has been coming for years | Sean Ingle


At every turn sports leaders have talked tough on Russia while diluting punishments

To paraphrase Mario Balotelli, why is it always them?

Was it not enough that Russia corrupted the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi with a devilish scheme that involved Federal Security Service agents passing steroid-riddled urine samples through a mouse hole before swapping them with clean urine? The act was so devious that the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, later called it “a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games”.

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