WADA bans Russia from Olympics over doping scandals

Russia will be barred from competing in next year’s Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games after the World Anti-Doping Agency on Monday banned the powerhouse from global sports for four years as punishment for tampering with a Moscow lab database.

WADA’s executive committee decided during a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, that Russia be suspended after the agency accused Moscow of falsifying doping data handed over to investigators earlier this year, according to Agence France-Presse.

Not only will the country have no formal presence in the next Olympic cycle, but government officials will be barred from attending any major events, while Russia will lose the right to host, or even bid for, tournaments.

“WADA’s executive committee approved unanimously to assert a non-compliance on the Russian anti-doping agency for a period of four years,” WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald said.

Under the sanctions, Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete at the Olympics next year but only if they can demonstrate that they were not part of what WADA believes was a state-sponsored system of doping.

“They are going to have to prove they had nothing to do with the non-compliance, (that) they were not involved in the doping schemes as described by the McLaren report, or they did not have their samples affected by the manipulation,” Fitzgerald said.

The committee made the decision after concluding that Moscow had tampered with lab data by planting fake evidence and deleted files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats, WADA investigators and the International Olympic Committee said last month.

“Flagrant manipulation” of the Moscow lab data was “an insult to the sporting movement worldwide,” the IOC said last month.

It remained unclear how the ruling will affect Russian teams taking part in world championships such as soccer’s World Cup in 2022.

Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA can appeal WADA’s decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport within 21 days.

One of the conditions for the reinstatement of RUSADA — which was suspended in 2015 in the wake of the athletics doping scandal but reinstated last year — had been that Moscow provide an authentic copy of the lab data. The sanctions effectively strip the agency of its accreditation.

RUSADA head Yuri Ganus could not be immediately reached for comment. His deputy, Margarita Pakhnotskaya, told the TASS news agency that WADA’s decision had been expected, according to Reuters.

Last month, Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov attributed the discrepancies in the lab data to technical issues.

“I’m not happy with the decision we made today. But this is as far as we could go,” said Linda Helleland, a Norwegian lawmaker who serves on the WADA executive committee and has long urged a tougher line against Russia.

“This is the biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen. I would expect now a full admission from the Russians and for them to apologize on all the pain all the athletes and sports fans have experienced,” Helleland added.

The perennial global sports power has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 report commissioned by WADA found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics.

Many Russian athletes were sidelined from the past two Olympics and the country was stripped of its flag altogether at last year’s PyeongChang Winter Games as punishment for state-sponsored doping cover-ups at the 2014 Sochi Games.

In PyeongChang, 168 Russians who had not been implicated in the country’s state-sponsored doping scheme competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.”

Former WADA president Dick Pound, who chaired the commission that in 2015 alleged mass doping in Russian athletics, said Moscow had gone “too far” this time.

“The IOC is a little bit tired about what Russia has been doing and so I see the IOC probably focusing more on athletes who are newer,” Pound told AFP.

Pound acknowledged the influential role of Russia — which hosted the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics as well as the World Cup in 2018 — “on many levels” in the sporting world.

“On the field of play, it is a big, important country. With China and the United States, it’s among the sporting giants, so that’s influential,” he said.

With Post wires