Watershed moment for WADA

The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) is approaching a watershed moment in its existence. On Monday, it posted the following statement on its website, “The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) confirms that WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee (CRC) met yesterday, 17 November, to consider a report from the Agency’s Intelligence and Investigations Department (I&I) and independent forensic experts and, accordingly, to discuss the ongoing compliance procedure brought against the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).

“In line with the process, the CRC will now bring a formal recommendation to the WADA Executive Committee (ExCo), under the chairmanship of WADA President Sir Craig Reedie whose term of office runs until 31 December 2019. The ExCo is scheduled to meet on 9 December to discuss the recommendation.

“The WADA I&I report was based on its assessment of a number of inconsistencies found in some of the data that was retrieved by WADA from the Moscow Laboratory in January 2019. This assessment included consideration of responses from the Russian authorities to a list of detailed and technical questions, including follow-up questions, raised by WADA I&I and the independent forensic experts.

“These questions gave RUSADA and the Russian Ministry of Sport an opportunity to explain the inconsistencies, as part of WADA’s decision on 17 September 2019 to open a formal compliance procedure against RUSADA.

“WADA continues to pursue this matter robustly and as quickly as practicable, while ensuring that due process is respected, as outlined in the International Standard for Code Com-pliance by Signatories.”

The Russian doping scandal will just not go away for WADA. Like a bad penny, it just keeps re-appearing.

In September, the Associated Press (AP) broke a story that the long sought-after data submitted eight months earlier by RUSADA, the Russian anti-doping agency to WADA had been manipulated. The massive data base of test results would have been used to confirm that Russian athletes had been cheating in a state-sponsored programme so that they could win medals at the 2014 Sochi Olympics and other international events. The handing over of the data was among the critical requirements the Moscow-based organization had had to meet for reinstatement, and WADA, desperate for the information, even extended the 31st December, 2018, deadline by two weeks.

WADA later confirmed the AP story saying that the data provided did not match when cross checked with data provided in 2017 by a whistleblower.

The Russians have issued conflicting state

ments on the matter. Whilst making a brief appearance at the Fifth WADA World Conference on Doping in Sport in Katowice, Poland earlier this month, the Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov told reporters, “There were no deletions or manipulations.”

Meanwhile, Yurij Ganus, the current director general of RUSADA, believes that thousands of the drug test results had been manipulated. During an interview at a sports conference in Colorado last month he opined that the data had been concealed or altered in order to protect the reputations and positions of former Russian star athletes now in Government or senior sports administration roles. Ganus stated that only individuals who have access to the most powerful institutions would have been able to manipulate the data.

The outspoken Ganus was quoted as saying that he was driven to assure that a new generation of Russian athletes could return untainted to the international sporting arena, despite the dangers his position brings. In recent years, two Russian antidoping officials with ties to the scandal have died in suspicious circumstances, while Ganus stated that he felt the authorities were monitoring his telephone calls and surveillance was been conducted near his home.

When WADA lifted its ban on Russia in 2018, before it had complied with the two remaining provisions for its reinstatement – providing the athletes’ data and acknowledgement that the doping programme was state sponsored – it effectively freed the authorities who controlled the lab from having to follow the terms of that agreement. The controversial decision was met with skepticism from several quarters, especially the athletes, who felt

that WADA had been too soft on Russia.

On 28th October, AP reported that Microsoft had stated that 16 sports and anti-doping organizations across three continents had been the subject of “significant” attacks by a Russia-linked cyberhacking group. These attacks began in September, according to Microsoft, around the same time, reports had surfaced that the data provided to WADA had been manipulated. The group is associated with Fancy Bear, which was accused of hacking into WADA systems and publishing reams of confidential medical information on Olympic athletes, in response to the ban imposed on Russian athletes.

Last week WADA released a video commemorating its 20th anniversary. The video which had premiered at Katowice conference features a number of the anti-doping body’s external and internal stakeholders speaking of how WADA came about, its leaders, its challenges and its progress. Now the focus is on the organization itself. According to Jonathan Taylor, the English lawyer who heads the WADA committee overseeing Russian compliance, Russia “needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat” to explain the anomalies in the data.

With the 2020 Tokyo Olympics just eight months away will WADA suspend the Russians again? Can WADA make the right decision on the 9th December?