Sex and Drugs and Biathlon

JAgd trips with subsequent trophy delivery, a briefcase full of dollar bills, the services of various prostitutes – the masterminds of Russian doping had such a corrupt and compliant partner in Anders Besseberg, the president of the Biathlon World Federation (IBU) from Norway, in the cover-up of doping and the Levering sport-political sanctions so that the investigative commission, which dealt with it for two years, gets straight to the point.

In the first sentence of her report, which was published this Thursday, she holds before the IBU and the world of sport “Evidence of systematically corrupt and unethical behavior at the very top of the IBU for a decade”. Besseberg seemed “to have no sense of ethical values ​​and no real interest in protecting the sport from fraud”.

The association lacked elementary mechanisms to enforce correct governance. What began with raids by the Norwegian and Austrian police at the IBU headquarters in Salzburg and at the residences of Besseberg and IBU Secretary General Nicole Resch in April 2018 must, in the opinion of the investigative commission, lead to reforms that go far beyond the biathlon association.

Shock at the IBU

The chairman of the commission, the British Crown Prosecutor Jonathan Taylor, described the report on Thursday as an “example of the importance of good governance in sport”. It shows why all questions of integrity should be dealt with exclusively by an independent body whose sole responsibility is to protect the ethical values ​​of sport, and not by an executive board dealing with a multitude of conflicting interests. Taylor and the members of the commission, among them lawyers Tanja Haug and Anja Martin from the Munich law firm SportsLawyer, openly recommend the report to other associations for reading. They could see if he was helping them achieve the highest standards of governance and integrity in their own sport.

IBU President Olle Dahlin was shocked by the violations described, although the cases are not new. What is terrifying about the report is the disclosure of the vulnerability of the system of sport, its rules and integrity. The biathlon, like the World Athletics Federation, wants to correct this with its integrity facility. The head of this “Integrity Unit”, Irish lawyer Louise Reilly, promised that her work would change the sport.

On 220 pages, the biathlon investigators show how easy it can be to let the integrity of sporting competition go overboard in order to combine the duties and benefits of official life with private interests in the most splendid way. Besseberg was particularly interested in hunting and sex with young women. The Russians offered him both, as the report describes in detail, so Besseberg wanted to go to Russia with world cups and world championships. Alexander Tichonow, the strong man of the Russian biathlon, could say: “Besseberg is our man.” convicted of a murder plot (and promptly given amnesty).

And although Russian doping was noticed in biathlon as early as 2008, although a Russian athlete said to IBU board member Jim Carrabre: “You won’t get us”, almost nothing happened. For years, the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) had no insight into the blood profiles of Russian athletes that were supposed to be used to detect abnormalities, as Secretary General Resch kept them like a secret and finally gave them into the care of the Russians.

Education of the Russian state doping delayed

That was when the state doping, which also fueled Russian biathlon victories at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, was exposed. Besseberg carried off and delayed the investigation. He oriented himself towards the head of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). The report quotes the lawyer Stephan Netzle, who was commissioned by the IBU in 2016 and 2017 to investigate the involvement of Russian biathletes in state doping: “At that time, Thomas Bach came and said: ‘Take it easy. We don’t want a collective punishment. ‘ That was the attitude towards which Besseberg tended. “