Atlanta [USA], Dec 9 : World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday handed a four-year ban to Russia from participating and hosting major sporting events over its involvement in a doping scandal.
This means that Russia will not take part in the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, 2022 Winter Olympics, and the FIFA World Cup 2022.
WADA’s compliance review committee (CRC) had suggested several sanctions because of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s (RUSADA) failure to cooperate fully during probes into Russian sport, CNN reported.
WADA’s executive committee decided to uphold the recommendations at a meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland.
It is being alleged that Russia manipulated a database to delete some test results and fabricate other data.
Three years ago, Russia was caught involved in one of the most controversial doping programs in sports history.
In the program, Russian anti-doping experts and members of the country’s intelligence service replaced urine samples tainted by performance-enhancing drugs with clean urine at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.
Following the resolution from that case, Russia agreed to provide a set of testing results to doping regulators from its Moscow laboratory.
It is that database which has forced Russia to now stand accused of manipulating to cover up continued violations.
“The Moscow data are neither complete nor fully authentic. In particular, while the 2019 copy of the Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) database matches in many respects the 2015 copy of the LIMS database provided to WADA by a whistleblower in 2017, hundreds of presumptive adverse analytical findings that appear in the 2015 copy of the LIMS database have been removed from the 2019 copy, and the related underlying raw data and PDF files have been deleted or altered,” WADA had said in an official statement.
RUSADA will now have 21 days to accept the notice. If the federation does not accept it, the matter will be referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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