Russia free to play in Euros despite Wada threat of ban
Major doubt was cast on the credibility of plans to punish Russia over sport’s worst drugs scandal last night after it emerged the country would be spared expulsion from next summer’s European Championship – dashing Scotland’s hopes of automatic qualification and those of Wales being co-hosts.
The omission of Euro 2020 from the list of events from which Russia faces a four-year ban for doctoring laboratory data linked to the scandal was condemned by campaigners, who branded proposals being considered by the World Anti-doping Agency “another smoke-andmirrors exercise”.
Under these plans, Russia would also not be stripped of the four matches due to be staged in St Petersburg next summer or the following year’s Champions League final, which the city was awarded in
September. Under the Wada code, the sanctions do not apply to continental football tournaments. Scotland and Wales had stood to benefit, the former having finished just below Russia in qualifying Group I and the latter among the countries on standby to stage matches. Russia could still be thrown out of the next two Olympics and Paralympics and the 2022 World Cup but the sanctions recommended by Wada’s compliance review committee also paved the way for it to compete at those events on a neutral basis.
When Russia was banned from last year’s Winter Olympics, the International Olympic Committee allowed most of its athletes to take part under the umbrella “Olympic Athletes from Russia”, a much-maligned move it would likely repeat at Tokyo 2020 and Beijing 2022.
Wada’s former deputy director general, Rob Koehler, denounced the CRC’S proposed sanctions as “another smoke-and-mirrors exercise, similar to what was done in Pyeongchang”.
The head of campaign group Global Athlete, who quit Wada last year before it lifted the previous ban imposed on the Russian Antidoping Agency, added: “Russia needs to be banned from the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games. Anything less will be seen as a weak response to one of the largest doping scandals of this century.”
Wada announced on Monday that its compliance review committee had proposed a four-year ban. Its executive committee will rule on the recommendations on Dec 9.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, branded the planned punishment another attempt by the West to sideline his nation.