Proposed ban ‘unfair,’ Russian officials say

MOSCOW Russian sports officials spoke out Tuesday against a World Anti-Doping Agency committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying they were overly harsh and would hurt sport there.

The recommendations, published Monday, mean Russia could miss out on the next two Olympics and world championships in a wide range of sports.

WADA’s independent compliance review committee recommended the ban after Moscow provided WADA with laboratory data that was found to have been doctored.

“I can only call these recommendations unfair,” Umar Kremlev, head of Russia’s boxing federation, said in a statement.

“Russia plays an important role in the development of global sport. How can such a country be banned?”

The committee’s recommendations will be put to the agency’s executive committee Dec. 9 in Paris.

For Dmitry Svishchev, president of Russia’s curling federation, the country has already sufficiently been punished for doping.

“These recommendations are harsh, baseless punishment for old problems for which Russia has already been punished,” he told Reuters.

“Russia has made great progress in fighting doping.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov linked the recommendations to what he called broader attempts by Western countries to reprimand Russia.

Russia was banned by the International Olympic Committee from last year’s Winter Games as punishment for alleged state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Under the latest recommendations, some Russians without a history of doping could be cleared to compete in major international events as neutrals, as was the case in the 2018 Pyeongchang Games.