Russia faces a four-year ban from major sporting competition after inconsistencies were found in doping data it supplied to the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada).
A series of recommended sanctions from Wada’s independent compliance review committee (CRC) will be considered by the agency’s executive committee in Paris on December 9th.
Here, we look at the background to the story and what might happen next.
How did this start?
Russia’s national anti-doping agency Rusada was initially declared non-compliant in November 2015. At first the doping scandal centred around track and field, but widened out to include other sports as further investigations were conducted.
An independent inquiry led by Professor Richard McLaren in 2016 found that “state-sponsored” and “systematic” doping had occurred across multiple sports. Russian athletes were not banned outright from the Rio 2016 Olympics, instead individual international federations had to vet competitors and declare whether they were considered clean.
Wada opted not to change Rusada’s non-compliant status in November 2017 and Russian athletes at the 2018 Winter Olympics had to compete as ‘Olympic Athletes from Russia’ (OAR), rather than under the Russian flag.
What changed?
In September 2018 Rusada was controversially reinstated as compliant. One of the conditions of reinstatement was that data from the Moscow laboratory covering a period from January 2012 to August 2015 had to be released to Wada for analysis. This data was gathered in January 2019.
What did the data show?
The laboratory data was compared to information obtained from a whistleblower in 2017, and inconsistencies between the two were discovered – namely positive findings present in 2017 were missing from the January 2019 data.
What did Wada do?
On September 17th of this year it gave the Russians three weeks to explain the inconsistencies, and Wada’s intelligence and investigations team then pored over those responses.
What did the CRC conclude?
That the data provided in January was “neither complete nor fully authentic” and that some of the alleged deletion of data took place in December 2018 and January 2019 – after Wada had requested the data under the terms of reinstatement.
What sanctions do Russia face?
The CRC has recommended that teams competing under a Russian flag will not be allowed to take part in major world sporting events for four years, which puts their participation in the summer and winter Olympic Games of 2020 and 2022 in serious jeopardy. It has also recommended that Russia be barred from staging major events, and be stripped of any existing hosting rights for such events.
What about Euro 2020?
It is understood that the recommendations do not cover the European Championship and therefore Russia would be clear to compete next summer and St Petersburg will remain as one of 12 host cities for the event.
This is because Uefa is not captured by the definition of a ‘Major Sports Organisation’ in the International Standard for Code Compliance by Signatories, the rulebook which sets out the guidelines to be followed in anti-doping cases. The definition refers to “international multisport organisations” but not single sport organisations like Uefa. World championships – such as the Fifa World Cup – are covered.
Does this mean there will be no Russian involvement at the Olympic or Paralympic Games?
Athletes who can prove that they are not implicated in any way by Russian non-compliance will be allowed to compete, but they would not do so under a Russian flag.
What happens next?
The CRC’s recommendation will be assessed by Wada’s executive committee at an emergency meeting in Paris on December 9th. If the ExCo endorses the recommendations, and Russia contests the allegations, the case will move on to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
