Russia Could Face Four-Year Ban After WADA Recommendation
November 26, 2019
The World Anti-Doping Agency Has Recommended that Russia face a four-year sanction surrounding sporting events.
WADA’s Compliance Review Committee has made this recommendation after “an extremely serious case of non-compliance with the requirement to provide an authentic copy of the Moscow data, with several aggravating features”.
Russian athletes could therefore once again be forced to compete separately from their country if they are banned from international events, similarly to Pyeongchang’s Winter Olympics in 2018.
“Russian athletes and their support personnel may only participate in major events staged in the four-year period where they are able to demonstrate that they are not implicated in any way by the non-compliance,” WADA’s CRC added.
This is due to “incriminating circumstances in the McLaren reports, there are no positive findings reported for them in the database, and no data relating to their samples has been manipulated”.
The statement said: “The Moscow data are neither complete nor fully authentic. In particular, while the 2019 copy of the 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.
“Some of the presumptive positive findings and related evidence were removed in 2016 or 2017, after the general scheme to cover up the doping of Russian athletes was first revealed by Dr [Grigory] Rodchenkov and then quickly confirmed by Prof. Richard McLaren’s investigation.
“However, further significant deletions and/or alterations were made in December 2018 and January 2019 (i.e., after the WADA ExCo imposed the data requirement). These activities were concealed by back-dating of computer systems and data files in an attempt to make it appear that the Moscow data had been in their current state since 2015.
“Furthermore, the commands issued to execute the manipulations, deletions and back-dating were also deleted, in an attempt to avoid detection of what had been done.”
