Russia stuck in stalemate with WADA after doping scandal
Russia seems to be stuck in stalemate that is blocking its full re-entry to international sports after a state-backed doping scandal.
The World Anti-doping Agency said Wednesday it is “not wavering” from two key demands in a road map to rehabilitate Russia, whose anti-doping body was suspended in November 2015.
Russia has refused to formally accept the findings of WADA-APpointed investigator Richard McLaren, who detailed the doping program and state-orchestrated coverups, nor allow access to potentially tainted samples stored in the Moscow laboratory central to the conspiracy.
At an annual conference for global anti- doping officials, WADA stressed its wish to welcome Russia back would not be sold short.
“That price is the road map, and that price is they have to accept (Mclaren),” the agency’s deputy director general, Rob Koehler, said in an expert panel session that also featured Russia’s top anti-doping official.
In an apparent plea to newly reelected President Vladimir Putin, Koehler said public acceptance of Mclaren’s evidence “needs to happen from the leadership, in order to start mending and having that cultural change.”
Putin said last year American interests were manipulating sports leaders to use doping scandals that embarrassed Russia ahead of the elections.
Russia’s federal law enforcement agency, which answers to Putin’s government, is another barrier to WADA restoring the compliance with global standards of the national anti-doping
agency, known as RUSADA.
WADA president Craig Reedie earlier revealed his frustration with trying to work with the Russian Investigative Committee which sealed the Moscow laboratory as part of its own case.
Four letters sent to Russia by WADA in recent weeks have gone unanswered, and “it seems our offer has fallen on deaf ears,” Reedie said in a keynote speech.
Reedie said while he wanted to bring Russia “back in from the cold ... it is just a pity it is taking so long for Russian authorities to make it happen.”
Decisions in Russia were taken above the level of sports officials, RUSADA director general Yuri Ganus told reporters after the session.
“It’s a question outside of our responsibility,” Ganus said when pressed on why Russia did not compromise on the two outstanding issues, adding it was a “procedural question” for federal investigators.
Ganus acknowledged Russia was “losing the trust of the international community. It’s a very
serious problem.”
Earlier on stage, Ganus said Mclaren was a “respected person” but did not address a delegate’s question of what happened next if Russia continued to refuse that Mclaren’s report was accurate.
WADA and the IAAF, the governing body of track and field, are proving Russia’s toughest opponents in fallout from the doping scandal which corrupted the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee imposed conditions on Russia’s team selections for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics and 2018 Pyeongchang Oiympics, though reinstated Russia’s Olympic body days after the games finished in South Korea last month.
The IAAF this month threatened the Russian track federation, suspended since 2015, with expulsion if progress was not made by July.
The doping scandal has not yet affected Russia’s hosting of the World Cup, which kicks off on June 14 in Moscow.