The latest leak came as Russian President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin frowns on such hacking, but believes the leaks include “interesting findings” that are in the “public interest” – a statement similar to the one he made about suspected Russian leaks aimed at influencing the USA presidential election earlier this month.
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“The highly concerning issue here is the leak of personal medical information”.
In particular, the second trove of names includes Dagmara Wozniak, an American sabre fencer who represented the U.S. at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The United States Anti-Doping Agency said all of the athletes named had followed proper procedure in getting permission to use the medications.
The leak of Wiggins and Froome’s records forced the British cycling greats to defend their medical use of otherwise-banned drugs.
Previously, Wada employed professor Richard McLaren to investigate spurious claims of Russian state-sponsored doping.
Froome’s two TUEs were for short courses of prednisolone, a steroid used to treat acute chest complaints, in 2013 and 2014.
Twice Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova of the Czech Republic also had her TUEs published as did athletes from Germany, Denmark, Poland, Romania and Russian Federation.
Also on the list is Kathleen Baker, an American swimmer who won one gold medal and one silver medal at the 2016 Summer Olympics.
Harting was revealed to have permission to use medications during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where he finished fourth.
The medical data of 29 athletes from eight countries, nearly half of them from the United States, has now been stolen from WADA by a Russian-based cyber espionage group called Tsar Team (APT28), or “Fancy Bears”, and published online.
WADA considers the attacks are being carried out as retaliation for the agency’s investigations that exposed state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation and led to nearly the entire track and field team being banned from last month’s Olympics.
The potential scale of the hack was laid bare after those behind it threatened to publish records from more athletes in the coming days in an escalation of hostilities sparked by Russia’s exile from world sport.
To those athletes that have been impacted, we regret that criminals have attempted to smear your reputations in this way; and, assure you that we are receiving intelligence and advice from the highest level law enforcement and IT security agencies that we are putting into action, WADA director general Olivier Niggli said in a statement. It is very in now..
WADA have already blamed a Russian group and has approached the country’s Government to assist it in its investigation. She and her husband, a former official with the Russian national anti-doping agency, are now living at an undisclosed location in North America.
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He added that it was hard for him to comment on the list of athletes, because it was related to the Olympic Games held by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and it should be dealt with by the IOC and WADA. Stay tuned for new leaks..
