Russia has been banned from the 2020 Olympic Games and world championships in a range of sports after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) ruled to punish it for manipulating laboratory data.
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 heavy sanction will see Russia ruled out of next year’s Tokyo Olympics, the 2022 Football World Cup in Qatar and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing.
Russian government officials have been barred from attending any major events, while the country has lost the right to host, or even bid, for tournaments.
The Russian flag and national anthem have also been banned from next year’s Tokyo Olympics and other major sports events for four years.
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.
WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald said the executive committee unanimously approved the ban.
“They are going to have prove they had nothing to do with the noncompliance, 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.
Russian whistleblower Dr Grigory Rodchenkov, who was influential in initially exposing the doping cover-up, praised WADA’s decision.
“Finally, Russia’s many doping and obstruction sins will now get some of the punishment they richly deserve. For far too long, Russia has weaponized doping fraud and state-sponsored criminal activity as a tool of foreign policy,” said Rodchenkov via his lawyer Jim Walden, in a statement sent to CNN.
“Let every corrupt nation that tries to play from Russia’s illicit playbook take heed of today’s monumental decision. When doping conspiracies become a crime under the Rodchenkov Anti-Doping Act, cheaters will be in U.S. prisons and clean athletes will be better protected.”
RUSADA has 21 days to accept the decision or send the matter to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
Svetlana Zhurova, first deputy chairperson of the international committee of the Russian State Duma lower parliament house, suggested an appeal was very likely and that a decision would be made when RUSADA meets on December 19.
“I am 100 per cent sure [Russia will go to court] because we must defend our athletes,” she told TASS News Agency.
