In December of 2011, Aleksey Melnikov, a senior coach of Russia's long-distance running team, met with marathoner Liliya Shobukhova.
Shobukhova was a multiple winner of several lucrative professional races. Melnikov told Shobukhova that her name was on a list of likely dopers based on blood-testing results from her biological passport. If the ruling stood, she would be banned from the 2012 London Summer Olympics.
He told her he could make the test go away. Shobukhova just had to give him €150,000 ($235,000). She packed the cash in a bag and paid.
Melnikov returned shortly before the London Games and asked for an additional €300,000. Shobukhova asked where the first instalment had gone. Melnikov told her it was for "the lawyer."
Already halfway down the rabbit hole, Shobukhova paid the additional sum.
At the same time, a lawyer representing International Association of Athletics Federations president Lamine Diack was in Moscow, hand-delivering notice of Shobukhova's suspension – a contravention of IAAF procedures.
The letter never reached the athlete.
No action was taken.
Shobukhova competed in the Olympic marathon (and did not finish). This was a surprise to some members of the IAAF's Medical and Anti-Doping Department, who knew she should have been sitting at home.
They began to complain. People began to panic. Melnikov refunded two-thirds of Shobukhova's bribe. The money was repaid by a Singapore-based corporation run by a close friend and business associate of Papa Massata Diack, son of the IAAF president and a consultant to the organization.
As things unravelled, Melnikov begged Shobukhova to volunteer for a suspension. She would not. Eventually, an acceptance-of-sanction form signed by Shobukhova was received by the IAAF. The signature was forged. After a good deal of wrangling and embarrassment, she was finally suspended for doping in 2014.
By that point, Shobukhova was understandably a little put out.
"(C)orruption was embedded in the organization," concluded the second instalment of Canadian Dick Pound's independent investigation into the IAAF, released Thursday. In a press conference detailing his findings, Pound called Shobukhova's case "the tip of the iceberg" regarding athlete extortion.
The first of Pound's instalments concerned a widespread Russian conspiracy to cheat in track events using banned substances, along with the unsubtle suggestion the Russians weren't alone in the practice. The second takes on the IAAF leadership and what one might call its Cosa Nostra business norms, again with the unsubtle suggestion that many beyond ex-president Diack's family and inner circle were involved. Some got money. Some ignored what was going on. Given the scope of malfeasance and years of semi-public whispering, it is exceedingly difficult to believe anyone in a position of authority could not have suspected what was happening.
By the end, it seems the IAAF was no longer a sports oversight body. It was an illegal enterprise, trading backhanders for broadcast rights and rigged drug-test results.
We are well beyond being surprised by these sorts of revelations, or at least we should be. We now know for certain that the quixotic efforts to end doping have rotted one of amateur athletics' premier enforcement systems from the ground up.
Getting rid of PEDs in sport is as realistic a goal as "winning" a war on drugs. All the attempt does is introduce a subterranean economy into the sports marketplace. Wherever there is a Shobukhova – someone with money looking to keep a secret – there will be people willing to take advantage of them.
Pretending otherwise has become the raison d'etre of the International Olympic Committee and its vassals. The same is true of the Federation International de Football Association, which has found a way to remove the drugs while increasing the greed.
One is reminded of Lord Acton's note to Archbishop Creighton: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely." As famous as that phrase is, few mention the next few words in the letter, which have some bearing here: "Great men are almost always bad men."
That reality puts Pound and reputation-scrubbers in an impossible situation.
The only consistent thing about the scandals suffered by the IOC, FIFA and other sports bureaucracies over recent decades is their consistency. No remedial solution – public humiliation, suspensions, fines, jail terms, setting fire to executive structures – has slowed that roll. They just keep coming.
These organizations are run by men (and it's almost always men) of accomplishment and influence. They are new aristocrats and born disruptors – a modern way of saying "rule breakers." It is in their nature to operate outside accepted boundaries. Once they've been caught straying toward megalomania, they are succeeded by people with the same sort of personality. Then the march toward the next outrage begins anew.
(A nice illustration of such: The new president of the IAAF, Sebastian Coe, said Wednesday that there "was no cover-up" over doping during his time as a board member under Diack. A day later, Pound called what happened "a cover-up." This would seem to suggest Coe was either complicit or fatally ineffective. Nonetheless, Pound gave Coe his vote of confidence as the person capable of cleaning up the IAAF.)
Changing the name plates won't fix world track and field. If the goal here is an end to corruption – and rest assured, it is not – there's an easy solution.
In the case of the IOC and its attendant sports governing bodies, immediately cease drug testing and make the organizations into subsistence-level non-profits with no cash distribution functions. Turn the IAAF et al into event organizers and nothing else. Release the athletes into the free market with no rules or fetters.
If you want to hold a track championship in European Capital X and have the cash to do so, then have at it. If broadcasters want a piece of it, let them deal with the money men. Pay your performers. Don't bother with the urine tests.
Problem solved.
The people who'll be most outraged by the suggestion will be insiders with something to gain, using as their first line of defence "the Olympic ideal" and all the "clean-games" Pablum we're fed like idiots every two years. I'd guess that, at some point, Liliya Shobukhova would have vocally counted herself among them. I doubt she would now.
Whoever and wherever these supporters of the cult of amateurism remain, I look forward to reading their names in future independent reports.