WADA ‘failed clean athletes’ with Russia call

THE World Anti-Doping Agency has been accused of “failing clean athletes” around the globe by its own vicepresident after it controversially lifted the Russian Anti-Doping Agency’s suspension.

Norwegian politician Linda Helleland was one of only two members on WADA’s 12-strong executive committee to reject a compromise deal to reinstate RUSADA at a meeting in the Seychelles yesterday.

The Russian agency and its Moscow laboratory were suspended in November 2015 when their central roles in Russia’s statesponsored doping programme were first revealed by a WADAsponsored investigation.

A second WADAfunded investigation in 2016 broadened the scandal, plunging Olympic and Paralympic sport into a crisis it is still wrestling with, as the reaction to yesterday’s vote demonstrates.

In a statement, Helleland, who had announced on Tuesday that she would vote to uphold RUSADA’s ban as the Russian authorities had still not met the last two criteria on a “roadmap to compliance” agreed in 2016, said the decision to reinstate “casts a dark shadow over the credibility of the anti-doping movement”.

Claiming it was “wrong to welcome RUSADA back until they had fully and transparently met the roadmap”, Helleland said the decision “defied the wishes” of athletes, national anti-doping agencies and sports authorities.

“Today, we failed the clean athletes of the world,” she added.

WADA president Sir Craig Reedie, however, insisted the decision is a common-sense solution to gridlock on the roadmap.