Russia was banned from the Olympics and world championships in a range of sports for four years on Monday after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ruled to punish it for manipulating laboratory data, a WADA spokesman said.
WADA’s executive committee took the decision after it concluded that Moscow had tampered with laboratory data by planting fake evidence and deleting files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.
The WADA committee’s decision to punish Russia with a ban was unanimous, the spokesman said.
Russia, which has tried to showcase itself as a global sports power, has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics.
Its doping woes have grown since, with many of its athletes sidelined from the past two Olympics and the country 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.
Monday’s sanctions had been recommended by WADA’s compliance review committee in response to the doctored laboratory data provided by Moscow earlier this year.
One of the conditions for the reinstatement of Russian anti-doping agency 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 laboratory data.
The sanctions effectively strip the agency of its accreditation.
Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov last month attributed the discrepancies in the laboratory data to technical issues.
The punishment, however, leaves the door open for clean Russian athletes to compete at major international sporting events without their flag or anthem for four years, as was the case during the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics.
Some Russian officials, meanwhile, have branded the call for sanctions unfair and likened it to broader Western attempts to hold back the country.
If RUSADA appeals the sanctions endorsed by WADA’s executive committee, the case will be referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), WADA has said.
(c) The Moscow Times
“Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov last month attributed the discrepancies in the laboratory data to technical issues.”
Deleting evidence is not a technical issue, it’s lying and cheating, two of Muscovy’s better qualities.
The movie title ‘The neverending story’ comes to mind…
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Should have banned the whole lot of them from all sports, clean athletes and druggies. I don’t recall any of these athletes blaming Russia for denying them the right to appear at the Olympics. All of them are blaming the US of course.
Just imagine the nation’s culture that is so bad, so upside down, that you can watch a doctor give you an injection but you blame the West for their pesky rules, etc. Now, if we could just get the UN, OSCE, PACE and everyone else to ban the eastern idiots….
So funny reading the comments on RT. WADA is run by the US, it’s anti Russian, blah, blah, blah. They forget it was WADA who reinstated Muscovy last year, despite many countries warning them not to.
Yeah, they stick needles in their arms but it is the United States’ fault……..where’s my vodka ? ;)))
This must be the comment of the week on RT. LMAO
“All free thinking countries should boycott the next olympics.”
LMAO, not surprised the brain-washed sheep relate doping to free-thinking. Why not also add wife-beating to the Olympics as a Russian cultural exercise?!
Ya I read a bunch of the horse shitt they were saying , its not their fault and there was no drugs , losers should be banned longer but 4 years is a good start , cant wait to hear there appeal .
The bribes did not work anymore.
Ridiculous, this keeps happening then they provide the option to get round it by calling them ‘Independent Russian State’ or some such bullshit.
The ‘Athletes’ cheat as well as the so-called monitoring agencies. Ban the fucking lot is the only way to make them stop.
Especially now they have managed to find a way to make their men look like women, back in the 1970’s and 1980’s they didn’t need to bother, there was no Hormone testing. Now there is isn’t it funny all those rather butch looking women have all disappeared from sport.