No appeal from the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, no Russian athletes competing for two years

RUSADA announced this on Monday, adding, taking into account the interests of the athletes, it decided not to challenge the verdict.

The CAS announced on December 12 that it had approved a ban on Russia, but had halved the four-year penalty imposed by the International Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in December 2019. Under the CAS decision, Russians will not be allowed to represent their nation at the Tokyo Summer Olympics postponed to 2021 and the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, nor, if they qualify successfully, at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. According to the decision, Russia will not be entitled to hold a major sporting event or bid until 16 December 2022. During this time, Russian government officials and MPs will not be allowed to attend events such as the Olympics or the World Championships in major sports.

The United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) was dissatisfied with the decision, in particular by halving the duration of the sanction originally imposed. However, the Kremlin has expressed its regret and resentment, mainly because the decision does not allow Russian officials, including President Vladimir Putin, to attend international sporting events for two years.

The Moscow Doping Control Laboratory and RUSADA were suspended at the end of 2015 after WADA released its competent committee's investigation report in November of that year, which found that there was widespread doping in Russia. A year later, an independent commission of inquiry led by Richard McLaren, a Canadian law professor commissioned by WADA, concluded that in Russia, doping was applied systematically with state support. According to the report, between 2011 and 2015, Russian doping control bodies manipulated test samples from about a thousand athletes in thirty sports and concealed positive test results.

Russian athletes still avoided total exclusion at the 2016 Rio Olympics, while Russia has already been banned from the 2018 Pyongyang Winter Games and its athletes had to apply for a special permit to perform. Anyone who received this could participate in the tournaments as neutral. This possibility is still valid: Russian athletes who can prove that they are cleanly prepared can be neutral there in the big competitions.

The Russian agency received its testing license back on September 20, 2018, and the Moscow lab was able to resume operations three months later. WADA imposed several conditions on the authorization of the latter, one of which was the transfer of the database. However, the international agency was still prevented from then copying the data, which was then handed over by the Russians last January. WADA had already indicated that it could take up to months to verify the information, and then in September 2019 announced that it had launched a formal investigation into the "inconsistencies" contained in the database.

Following the investigation, the WADA Compliance Committee recommended a four-year ban, which was voted unanimously by the Executive Committee last December, as it found evidence that false evidence had been filed at the Moscow laboratory or destroyed positive results that could have uncovered fraud.

(Source: Source: sportrajongo.hu, mti / Photo: pixabay)