LONDON: The ban on Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA was lifted by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) yesterday, subject to various conditions, in a decision greeted with dismay by campaigners.
Although the change will have no immediate effect on current bans on the Russian federations for athletics, weightlifting and paralympics, it opens the door for their return, following the reinstatement of the Russian Olympic Committee after the country was banned from this year’s Winter Games in South Korea.
RUSADA was suspended in November 2015 after an independent Wada report carried out by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren outlined evidence of massive state-backed, systematic doping and cover-ups in Russian sport.
Since then Wada has repeatedly said RUSADA would not be reinstated until it satisfied various key criteria on a “roadmap for return”, including recognising the findings of the McLaren Report and allowing access to stored urine samples at RUSADA’s Moscow laboratory.
At yesterday’s Wada executive committee meeting in the Seychelles’ capital Victoria, members approved a lesser version of the first point - an acceptance of the IOC’s Schmid Report, which endorsed the core findings of the McLaren Report - and set another “clear timeline” for the implementation of the second.
That means, after remaining banned for refusing access to the Moscow lab, RUSADA is now approved, but could be banned again if access continues to be denied.
Wada vice-president Linda Helleland, who was the most senior member of the agency’s leadership to express opposition to reinstatement, said yesterday’s decision cast a dark shadow over the credibility of the anti-doping movement.
“As an organisation, Wadas number one job is to be true to our values of fair sport,” Helleland said in a statement. “And today we made the wrong decision in protecting the integrity of sport and to maintain public trust in the anti-doping work.
“Today we failed the clean athletes of the world.”
While the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reinstated Russia in February, the International Association of Athletics Federations’ suspension remains in place.
The IAAF has its own task force investigating Russia’s compliance, which will report back to a council meeting in December. Some Russian athletes have been allowed to compete as neutrals in international competition after proving their anti-doping credentials.
Russia was among nine countries to be given a one-year ban by the International Weightlifting Federation last October due to doping offences discovered when samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics were reanalysed.