WADA bans Russia from Olympics for four years over doping

LAUSANNE: The World Anti-Doping Agency on Monday banned Russia from global sporting events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from an anti-doping laboratory.

“The full list of recommendations have been unanimously accepted,” said WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald, speaking at a meeting of the body’s executive committee in Lausanne. “WADA’s executive committee approved unanimously to assert a non-compliance on the Russian anti-doping agency for a period of four years,” he added.

The ruling means Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics as neutrals, 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 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 independent McLaren report, released in 2016, revealed the significant extent of state-sponsored doping in Russia, notably between 2011-15. It led to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) being suspended for nearly three years previously over revelations of a vast state-supported doping programme.

Full disclosure of data from the Moscow laboratory was a key condition of Russia’s controversial reinstatement by WADA in September 2018.

Not only will Russia be ruled out of the next Olympic cycle, but Russian government officials will be barred from attending any major events, while the country will lose the right to host, or even bid, for tournaments.