A new barrier fell this Monday, June 27, 2016 in the eventful journey of preparation for the Rio de Janeiro Games. According to the official count, there are less than 40 days until the opening ceremony. Thirty-nine days and as many nights, not one more. In other places, the time would have come to make the beds in the athletes' village and to place fruit baskets in the rooms of the IOC hotel. In Brazil, the news on D – 39 remains tinged with a worrying conditionality.
The first is to be placed in the thick doping file. At the end of last week, the World Anti-Doping Agency suspended the Rio de Janeiro laboratory, effective June 22, 2016. A little over a month before opening, the decision is unprecedented. She will go down in history. WADA found that the Brazilian lab was not in compliance with its global code. A suspension certainly provisional, decided for six months, with the possibility of an appeal. But time is running out.
Present in Rio de Janeiro over the last weekend, the director of the Olympic Games at the IOC, Christophe Dubi, was not particularly optimistic about the continuation of the series. After specifying that the Brazilian laboratory had lost its accreditation for having misinterpreted certain analysis results, in particular announcing false positive cases, he spoke of the immediate future. “Finding your accreditation before the start of the Games is feasible,” explained Christophe Dubi, quoted by Associated Press. But there are still several steps to take. Hopefully we can do the testing for the Games in Brazil.”
A huge conditional condition, therefore, that the Brazilian authorities are struggling to lift by repeating like a refrain, since last Friday, that things will return to order in mid-July. Christophe Dubi is clear: removing the suspension from an anti-doping laboratory cannot be done with the snap of a finger. The procedure requires the dispatch of a team of WADA experts. Not easy.
Otherwise, the controlled samples would be sent abroad, to a country and a laboratory to be designated. A scenario which would have the effect, in addition to seriously increasing costs, of slowing down procedures and opening the door to appeals for formal defects.
The other news of the moment concerns the velodrome. This time, the pendulum is moving in the right direction. The Olympic equipment, requested for months by Brian Cookson, the president of the UCI, would be ready for use. Once again, the conditional is appropriate because the information is from a Brazilian source. The organizing committee for the 2016 Games proudly announced that the track had finally been used by a group of cyclists. Essentially, local track riders, around thirty, invited to play testers of a delayed and still delayed infrastructure, to the great dismay of the UCI and its president.
Comment from Gilles Peruzzin, the UCI technical delegate: “Obviously, this is not ideal. We would have preferred a real pre-Olympic event. But, given the circumstances, we are quite happy to have been able to organize training over the weekend. »
Everything is far from over. The velodrome is still awaiting delivery of the temporary stands. There are still layers of paint to apply here and there. The track is covered in dust. “But it looks set to be quick,” anticipates Swiss Gaël Suter, one of the privileged few invited to tour the wooden ring during the day on Sunday. It should be quick. It should be ready on time, as are the swimming pool and the tennis complex, two sites still under construction. Without a doubt. Maybe.
