For a moment there it looked as if Russia had finally fessed up about its gigantic sports doping operation, even though a senior official’s acknowledgment of an “institutional conspiracy” in an interview with Rebecca Ruiz of The Times was coupled with the usual whining about how Russia was being pilloried for what everybody does. But then the official, as well as the minister of sports, came back and said the comment was taken out of context. And just like that, the matter was back to square one.
Square one in this case is that the Russian authorities, while conceding that Russian athletes benefited from systematic doping, have tried every which way to insist that this was not ordered or facilitated by the Kremlin.