World No 1 Valentin Novikov not selected by RUS for WGames

[guessed]

(further extracted from Mattias posting to O_Net Newsgroup)

This is my recent article about this huge scandal (published on the
Swedish O-site http://www.alternativet.nu):

Giant quarrel within the Russian orienteering federation

A long-standing conflict within the Russian orienteering federation
has degenerated and resulted in a scandal where the world number one
orienteer and recent superior champion in the Swedish Elitserien,
Valentin Novikov, and his likewise very competitive younger brother
Leonid have been excluded from the Russian national team, just
before World Games in Germany and WOC in Japan.

Written by: Mattias Eriksson, Lunds OK, Sweden

The official explanation is that the brothers did not submit their
required whereabouts reports in time to the World Anti-Doping Agency
(WADA) last winter, and that the Russians therefore, afraid of
punishment from the IOF, don't want to risk allowing them to
participate in these competitions. The wife of Valentin, Julia
Novikova, who officially committed the same violation, however, will
be allowed to participate in WOC. The explanation for that is "a
lower risk for punishment if only one runner with WADA violation
participates". There is, however, no support in the rules for
such an opinion.

A closer investigation of the case and the rules of IOF clearly
shows that no anti-doping rule violation has been committed (see the
IOF anti-doping rules, paragraph 5.5.3) since no formal written
warnings were sent. On the contrary it is obvious that the
responsible person(s) at the Russian orienteering federation (ROF)
has made a number of grave mistakes in dealing with the matter and
that a punishment against the ROF could be considered (se paragraph
12.3.3). Some information even indicate that the responsible person
(s) in ROF deliberately delayed the whereabouts reports (which
according to the rules are supposed to go through the national
federation) in order to put the Novikovs in a difficult situation.

After this, pressure was put on Novikov (from ROF) to make him try
to misuse the IOF rules and retire (!) temporary and thereby secure
his participation in WOC (se paragraph 5.6) after a six
months "quarantine" period. Valentin, fortunately, declined
to try such a trick. One can easily imagine the doping suspicions
such an attempt would have brought.

The background and actual explanation to this scandal is a long-
standing conflict within the Russian orienteering establishment
where the father and trainer of Leonid and Valentin, Yuri Novikov,
has been a very active player in one of the fighting camps. The
dominant players in the other camp couldn't care less if the
world number one orienteer was not allowed to participate in WOC,
because of their ambitions to reach their personal goals (and punish
Yuri).

It is the hope of the author of this article that everyone who reads
this and feel that they might have some influence in this issue
(national team runners, federation employees and others) take their
responsibility and protest strongly against this madness! Otherwise
there is a substantial risk that the world number one orienteer
won't be allowed to participate in WOC and that the status of the
championships thereby will be considerably undermined.

As a parenthesis it can be mentioned that all members of the Russian
national team, including Valentin, Leonid and Julia Novikov, where
tested negative for doping during the Russian WOC tests in June.

/Mattias Eriksson