It can be said that Russia is having hard times in terms of sports as it could face a ban from all major sports events over discrepancies in a lab database. In January, Russia gave data from its Moscow laboratory as a condition of its reintegration back into the sporting fold after a three-year suspension for a state-sponsored doping programme but on this Monday, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said that its executive committee had been informed that a formal compliance procedure had been opened over the discovery of “inconsistencies” in the country’s performance-enhancing drug testing data. This move has been taken while keeping in mind the report from its Compliance Review Committee and the data contains the possibility that they were deliberately manipulated to conceal doping by Russian athletes.
Now, Russia has been given the time period of three weeks to explain and justify the “inconsistencies” and why numerous cases of positive drug tests at the Moscow Laboratory were deleted from the results sent to the group, or face an of risk being excluded from the Olympics and World Championships. Highlighting the same issue, chairman of Wada’s compliance panel, Jonathan Taylor told, “There’s evidence this data has been deleted.” And added that, “We need to understand from the Russian authorities what their explanation is.” Thus, Russia faces the chance of being banned from not only from Olympics 2020, 2022 soccer World Cup but World Championships and in all the major sports as well.
Even Alexander Ivlev, Chairman of (Russian Anti-Doping Agency) Rusada’s supervisory board confirmed that, “WADA has given the Russian side three weeks to give explanations regarding the alleged changes in the database from the Moscow laboratory. Such an answer will be presented.”
Kolobkov, Russian Minister of Sport Pavel promised to cooperate in this matter and inquiry, “From our side, we will continue to offer all possible assistance.” He also said, “What exactly these inconsistencies are and what they are related to, that will be cleared up by the experts in the field of digital technology from both sides, who are already cooperating.”
As the International Association of Athletics Federations voted to keep Russia’s track and field federation suspended and thus the country will miss the World Championships which is all set to begin in Doha this week. This scandal has hobbled Russian International Sports for almost 4 years and has seen country partly missing the Summer Olympics 2016 and excluded from the Winter Olympics last year. RUSADA was suspended nearly 3 years ago over revelations of wrongdoing including a systematic conspiracy to switch tainted samples at the Sochi Winter Olympics 2014. Also, during the suspension period by WADA, Russia was allowed by the International Olympic Committee to take part in the 2016 Rio Olympics, but at 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games, Russian competitors had to part neutrally. IAAF has still maintained a ban on Russia but many of the athletes were given special dispensation under a neutral banner.
WADA’s new sanctioning powers justified the controversial decision to reinstate Rusada in January. Taylor said, “You cannot stop cheating. You can only make sure you have got a system that allows you to respond to it.” Russia also delayed and missed the deadlines to hand over the data in January and thus it has turned out to be a more controversial issue.