In releasing private medical information about dozens of Olympians over the past week, the Fancy Bears hack team has sought to reveal “dirty methods” by which athletes — specifically Americans — win their medals.
But Fancy Bears, which the World Anti-Doping Agency has said is a Russian cyber espionage group, has likely fallen short of that goal, experts agreed. Rather, the hackers have exposed other cracks in the anti-doping system — namely a lack of transparency around therapeutic use exemptions (TUEs) and concerns about WADA’s ability to protect athletes’ information.
Those concerns come at a fraught time for anti-doping, as the last year has also included two investigations that revealed widespread and state-sponsored doping in Russia.