Their revelations about state doping in Russia shocked the sports world in 2014. Today Julyja Stepanowa and Witali Stepanow are still fighting for permanent right to stay in the United States. For fear, they now emotionally ask for help.
Witali Stepanow has enough. Ten years ago, he and his wife Julija were celebrated in almost the entire sports world and beyond as brave heroes. An invitation to the White House, Lobeden and Aid promises followed. Now the most famous whistleblower couple in sports history feels helpless, forgotten and abandoned by many sports officials who gave great speeches at the time.
In 2014, Julija Stepanowa, a former 800-meter runner who had doped, and her husband Witali, an employee of the Russian anti-doping agency, made an alarm. Under great personal risk, Julija had filmed meetings with Russian top athletes and officials with a hidden camera.
The pictures were shown in December 2014 in the ARD documentary “Secret Doping: How Russia makes its winners” and triggered a landslide in world sports. The revelations provided the first proof of state -funded doping in Russia and finally led to the exclusion of the country from the Olympic Games.
“We can’t live like normal people”
“You have the feeling of doing something necessary for the Olympic sport or for clean athletes around the world. And in the end you will be able to live with rights and papers like a normal person, without restrictions in the future”said Stepanow of the ARD doping editorial team-his hopes turned out to be a fallacy: “Unfortunately, the world has developed over the past ten years, and we still have no civil rights or valid documents. We do not know whether we can ever live like normal people again.”
The couple initially traveled to Germany. Then, according to Stepanow, the Welt-Anti-Doping agency Wada organized the move to the United States. This is the safest option, it said. Together with their two little sons Robert and Eric, they live in a secret place today. Your asylum status has not changed since then. They do not have citizenship, cannot leave the country and have problems finding work.
Witali Stepanow with his family
Trump’s asylum policy increases the risk
Her situation differs, for example, from that of the former Moscow laboratory chief Grigori Rodtschenkow, who left Russia as a direct reaction to the revelations of the Stepanows and today enjoys better protection in an official witness protection program in the USA as a whistleblower.
The location of the Stepanow family seems more serious than ever. Four US governments have now been disregarded by the asylum application by Witali and July: that of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden and now Trump again. But in the second term of Donald Trump, which is characterized by increasing xenophobia, the situation is also pussy for the steps.
“You try to live your life”
If they are shown, their great fear, they have to go back to Russia – to the country in which they are considered traitors. “You try not to think about living your life. But on some days it just doesn’t work. It’s like it is in your head”says Witali Stepanow and adds bitterness: “I assume, thank us for the Olympic and anti-doping institutions. So thank you for having fraud and doping.”
Last week he wrote a letter to high-ranking international sports officials, including the recent IOC President Thomas Bach. In the letter that the ARD has, Stepanow also recalled representatives of the World Anti-Doping Agency Wada and the World Athletics Athletics Association of Athletics. He closes with the words: “I hope that you too have a human side. Therefore I write to you and ask: Should whistleblower have rights and documents? Or should you be deceived, brought to another country and then be forgotten? I hope that someone will answer.” By the time of the publication, Stepanow said that he received no official answers or a meaningful reaction.
In sports “you have to obey”
Sports policy expert Jens Sejer Andersen is not surprised. For him this is one “Very clear signal that you have to obey if you strive for a career in sports and want to be protected by sport”. Andersen, whose influential sports policy think tank “Play the Game” is currently working out rules for better protection of whistleblovers, said the ARD: “The Stepanovs are probably one of the worst cases in which the sport has let its whistleblow down. But they are by no means alone. The way in which sport treated it is typical of how sport deals with its whistleblowers.”
Stepanov’s greatest frustration applies to the wada. He says that she did not provide promised help then and until today. The top anti-doping institution explained on ARD request that “no powers or influence on asylum procedures or decisions” in the USA and could not comment on the “activities of individual whistleblowers” or “its” level of support for certain sources “: “The confidentiality of this relationship must remain preserved for your protection”it said.
Top official show no interest
According to the ARD, neither Wada President Witold Banka nor World Athletics boss Sebastian Coe personally spoke to the Stepanows or met with them. In the meantime, the IOC provided support, paid Witali for advisory activity and helped Julyja with a scholarship. Both have now expired. On the ARD request, the IOC said that there was no way to influence US asylum policy. World Athletics announced that one would “talk to other sports organizations” to see what help can be offered to the Stepanows. For Witali and Julija Stepanow, such sentences have long since sounded like mockery.