IT’S TREACHERY

Russia’s return from drugs ban is met with fury

The World Anti- Doping Agency’s decision to welcome Russia back from its drugsrelated exile was met with anger and disbelief yesterday.

WADA were accused of treachery after their executive committee ignored massive opposition and voted to end the three-year ban imposed on Russia’s anti- doping agency for its part in the biggest doping scandal in sporting history.

Jim Walden, the lawyer representing Grigory Rodchenkov, a former Russian official turned vital whistleblower, said the decision was ‘the greatest treachery against clean athletes in Olympic history’.

he added: ‘The United States is wasting its money by continuing to fund WADA, which is obviously impotent to address Russia’s state-sponsored doping.’

Double Olympic champion Daley Thompson tweeted: ‘So (WADA president) Craig Reedie got his way and let the cheats back, with them

having not even paid lip service to the sanctions. How is this allowed to happen?’ Russia will now be free to test its own athletes again. The vote increases the chances that Russians will soon be competing under their own flag again in international athletics events, as well as in the Olympics, weightlifting and the Paralympics. WADA allowed a compromise on two key demands — that Russia accepted the existence of state-sponsored doping involving more than 1,000 Russian athletes and also that it granted access to its anti-doping lab in Moscow. But the lesser admission that only ‘a number of individuals within the Ministry of Sport and its subordinated entities’ were responsible was accepted, while a visit to the lab has not yet taken place. WADA vice-president Linda Hofstad Helleland was hugely critical, saying: ‘This casts a dark shadow over the credibility of the anti-doping movement.’ UK Sport said: ‘We call on WADA to explain how it came to the compromise of reinstating Russia.’