WADA asks CAS for public hearing on Russia doping case
MONTREAL: The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said Monday it has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for a public hearing on its case for Russia’s exclusion from international sporting competitions.
At stake in the hearing will be the fate of Russian athletes hoping to compete in such events as this year’s Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and 2022 football World Cup.
WADA director general Olivier Niggli said his group made the formal request for a public forum to resolve the dispute would ensure the world hears the case from both sides and understands how punishment, if any, is administered. “WADA’s investigations on Russia, and this latest case of non-compliance, have generated huge interest around the world,” Niggli said. “It is WADA’s view — and that of many of our stakeholders — that this dispute at CAS should be held in a public forum to ensure that everybody understands the process and hears the arguments.”
WADA sent its case against the Russian AntiDoping Agency (RUSADA) to CAS, the world’s highest sport court, last month. It will be a CAS panel that must decide whether to confirm the four-year ban WADA imposed on Russia last month after considering Russia’s case against the epic sanction.
In December, WADA imposed a four-year ban on Russia over what it considers a state-sponsored doping scheme — prohibiting Russia from participating in such events as this year’s Tokyo Olympics.
WADA says Russia “manipulated” data from an anti-doping laboratory in Moscow in the latest move in a long-running scandal that began with the 2015 revelation of long-term institutional doping involving senior Russian officials, secret agents and trafficked urine vials. Under the sanctions, Russians would be allowed to compete in the Tokyo Olympics only if they can demonstrate they were not part of the doping network — the same situation Russian athletes faced at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
RUSADA disputed the WADA executive committee ban on December 27, setting the stage for WADA to send the case to CAS. WADA investigators retrieved data from the RUSADA Moscow laboratory last year, but in analyzing the data, WADA and independent investigators confirmed the data had been manipulated and some data had been deleted.
Earlier, the executive committee of Russia’s suspended athletics federation resigned on Monday and transferred its authority to a working group designed to lift the organisation out of a 4-1/2-year doping crisis, the federation said.
The federation was plunged into deeper crisis when its president and six other people were provisionally suspended last November for having provided false explanations and forged documents to justify three missed doping tests by high jumper Danil Lysenko.
The charges prompted World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body, to suspend the federation’s reinstatement procedure and bar Russian track and field athletes from competing internationally as neutrals. The Russian federation’s woes worsened last week when the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the global body overseeing integrity in the sport, said the organisation had shown a “total lack of contrition” in its response to the Lysenko case and recommended that it be expelled from global athletics.
The federation said on Monday that its leadership was resigning and all responsibilities, including liaising with World Athletics, the AIU and other global organisations, was being transferred to a working group run by the Russian Olympic Committee.
“The crisis in Russian athletics has already lasted five years and it is clear to everyone that is had dragged on,” the federation quoted Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin as saying.
“Our common goal is to promptly normalise cooperation with World Athletics in order to restore our membership.” World Athletics said last week that the federation could avoid expulsion if its officials admitted to their involvement in the scandal. Russia is also in the process of appealing a four-year ban from competing under its flag at major international events as punishment for having provided WADA with doctored laboratory data.