Last night, ICSD Interim President pointed the finger of blame at the Polish Organising Committee for lack of anti-doping tests at Swimming World Championships.

Yesterday we reported on the concerns from Christof Niklaus, a technical representative at the 1st World Deaf Short Course Swimming Championships that there are no arrangements in place to test swimmers to ensure there are no doping violations.

WADA have been made aware of the situation and the concerns that ICSD and Russia may have colluded to avoid the testing.

At last nights technical meeting, Christof asked Gustavo, the ICSD Interim President if he could explain why there was no anti-doping at the championships to which he replied to email the ICSD office.

Christof repeated his question “because he is the ICSD representative at these championships and therefore should answer my question.“

In his second reply, Gustavo blamed the Poland Organising Committee for not organising anti-doping tests.

Christof considers Gustavo’s reply to show that he is “A very poor president, not fit for office.”

We understand that all Deaf World Championship organising committees are obliged to follow all regulations for hosting sports events if they wish to be sanctioned by the ICSD. In the process, ICSD should have appointed its Technical Director of swimming to work closely with the Organising Committee to ensure that arrangements were in place to meet WADA regulations. Therefore ICSD cannot deflect the blame on the Organising Committee, it must also accept that it is also responsible and if necessary withdrawing its stamp of approval to a non-compliant event.

The ICSD Chief Executive Dmitry Rebrov continues to hold the office of Secretary General of the All-Russian Sports Federation of Deaf Sport. He would also be responsible, on behalf of the ICSD Board, for overseeing the work of the Technical Commission to ensure that the WADA code of practice is implemented. This blatant conflict of interest does nothing to safeguard the protection of clean athletes especially when Rebrov has also been found guilty in a Russian court of falsifying audiograms.

After Valery Rukhledev was removed from office, the ICSD Board attempted to deal with the misdemeanours and subordination of Rebrov which would have had a part to play in the leadership split that we now have in the organisation.