Russian sports officials cry foul as WADA eyes four-year Olympic ban
MOSCOW: Russian sports officials on Tuesday spoke out against a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying this was overly harsh and would hurt sport there.
The recommendations, published on Monday, mean Russia could miss out on the next two Olympic Games and world championships in a wide range of sports.
WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee recommended the ban after Moscow provided WADA with laboratory data that was found to have been doctored.
“It’s sad. I can only call these recommendations unfair,” Umar Kremlev, head of Russia’s boxing federation, said in a statement. “Russia plays an important role in the development of global sport. How can such a country be banned?”
The committee’s recommendations will be put to the agency’s executive committee in Paris on December 9.
For Dmitry Svishchev, president of Russia’s curling federation, the country has already sufficiently been punished for its doping scandals.
“These recommendations are harsh, baseless punishment for old problems for which Russia has already been punished,” he said. “Russia has made great progress in fighting doping. To punish the next generation in such a harsh manner is too much.”
Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov cast calls for new anti-doping sanctions as one more Western effort to sideline Russia.
“There are those who want to put Russia in a defensive position accused of pretty much everything in every sphere of international life conflicts, economics, energy, gas pipelines, arms sales,” Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow when asked about the WADA panel’s recommendation.
Russia’s anti-doping chief, however, called the step justified.
The Russian anti-doping agency, known as RUSADA, has been sharply critical of the country’s authorities approach to the issue and said it expects Russia will likely have to accept the consequences.
“They’re to be expected and they’re justified, RUSADA CEO Yuri Ganus said. “One of the conditions for the sports authorities was not met, and unfortunately our athletes become hostages in this situation. Now there’s a question about a possible appeal, but as a lawyer I don’t see how it can be appealed.”
Ganus has long called for a shakeup in how sports are run in Russia, and suggested years of defensiveness had driven Russia into a dead end.
“We’re in the fifth year of this crisis, and unfortunately those individuals running our sport have not just failed to bring it out of the crisis, they’ve stuck it in deeper,” he said, pointing out that the ban would affect Russian athletes at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo and 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. “We are plunging, for the next four years, into a new phase of Russia’s doping crisis.”