Russia banned from Olympics, World Cup for 4 years over doping: WADA

MOSCOW: The World Antidoping Agency (WADA) on Monday banned Russia from global sporting events, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from an anti-doping laboratory.

WADA’S executive committee took the decision after it concluded that Moscow had tampered with laboratory data by planting fake evidence and deleting files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.

“The full list of recommendations have been unanimously accepted,” said WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald, speaking at a meeting of the body’s executive committee in Lausanne.

Under the sanctions, Russian sportsmen and women will still be allowed to compete at the Olympics next year but only if they can demonstrate that they were not part of what WADA believes was a statesponsored system of doping.

“They are going to have to prove they had nothing to do with the non-compliance, (that) they were not involved in the doping schemes as described by the Mclaren report, or they did not have their samples affected by the manipulation,” Fitzgerald said.

Russia, which has tried to showcase itself as a global sports power, has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 report commissioned by the WADA found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics.

Its doping woes have grown since, with many of its athletes sidelined from the past two Olympics and the country stripped of its flag altogether at

last year’s Pyeongchang Winter Games as punishment for statesponsored doping cover-ups at the 2014 Sochi Games.

Monday’s sanctions had been recommended by WADA’S compliance review committee in response to the doctored laboratory data provided by Moscow earlier this year.