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Yuliya Stepanova, an 800 meter runner for the Russian track team, was caught with an illegal substance in her body in 2013. She was punished for it.
Turns out that all of the Russian track athletes are compelled to cheat by the powers that be. She complied. She got caught. Then she turned spy.
The best success that the International Association of Athletics Federations and like organizations have had against dopers has been from people on the inside.
Stepanova went inside for two years.
Two years of secret audio tapes, video tapes, surreptitious text messages and emails all proving that doping on the Russian team was not only sanctioned, but was ordered, organization-wide and systemic.
She brought this proof to light. She quite literally put her life on the line to expose the cheating. She lives in an undisclosed place in the United Sates now hiding from those who would harm her. Her fears are very real; two Russian anti-doping officials were killed after the report was released earlier this year.
Now, as punishment, the entire Russian track team has been barred from the Rio Olympics this summer...including Yuliya Stepanova.
So let me get this straight. The whistleblower is being punished. The herd is run over a cliff and she goes with it? What is anyone's incentive to be honest and expose cheats? Remember, she's already done her time for getting caught in 2013.
For two years she skulked about in a clandestine life. Cloak and dagger doesn't even begin to cover it. The stress of living a lie to expose the truth was excruciating. Ghost around every corner. Sure death if you get caught. Understand, this all happened in a country that will kill you for being disloyal.
Now she lives a life in hiding, looking over her shoulder at every turn.
Nancy Armour of USA Today thinks the way the International Olympic Committee is treating Stepanova is preposterous. She's right and she has a solution.
Since the entire Russian track team is being kept home, she proposes that the IOC let her run under the Olympic flag.
There is precedent, Armour points out. Refugees who had no home in Olympics past have competed under the Olympic flag. So it's not like it hasn't been done before.
Pathetically, the IOC is so far washing their hands of her saying that there is nothing they can do.
Really?
This is the same committee that trumpets honest play? This is the organization that insists it wants to root out all cheaters? This is the group that asserts that they want to have clean Games?
And yet the means they used to expose the Russians and their cheating is left to twist without a home, without a flag, without an opportunity to do what she has done all her life...compete.
How does this incentivize the potential truth tellers of the future?
More than once in this space over the years I have trumpeted the value of the truth tellers in our organizations. Where they are embraced we stay a steady course. Where they are silenced we lose our way.
The way to silence them is by giving them little or no support or punishing them.
The way to see them flourish as a vital energy in our team dynamic is to embrace them, protect them and to reward them.
What is the IOC saying if they leave Stepanova alone in her misery this summer?
They are saying they are not serious about having a clean event.
Words are a wasted exercise when there is no movement. They are but a vapor, lost inconsequentially to the atmosphere.
They only gain solidity, strength, impact and power when followed by action.
Because of the holiday next week I will not be writing to you. Have a happy and safe Fourth, everyone, and I'll see you in two weeks.
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