WADA meet with Russia's sporting fate in their hands

Russia will discover Monday wher y will be banished from sporting competitions, including Olympic Games, for four years when World Anti-Doping Agency hold a crunch meeting in Lausanne. WA's executive committee is expected to approve a recommendation by its Compliance Review Committee that Russia be handed a four-year suspension after accusing Moscow of falsifying laboratory doping data handed over to investigators earlier this year. Such a heavy sanction would see Russia ruled out of next year's Tokyo Olympics and Winter Games in Beijing in 2022.

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Russian government officials would be barred from attending any major events, while country would lose right to host, or even bid, for tournaments. Under proposed sanctions, Russian athletes would still be allowed to compete at Olympics next year but only if y can demonstrate that y were not part of Russian system. Full disclosure of data from Moscow laboratory was a key condition of Russia's controversial reinstatement by WA in September 2018. Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSA) h been suspended for nearly three years previously over revelations of a vast state-supported doping program. Thomas Bach, International Olympic Committee (IOC) president, refused to "speculate" on outcome of WA meeting, but asked for a "clear" answer for events that might be affected.

"I'm not in a position to speculate," said Bach on Thursday after a meeting of IOC's own Executive Board. "I don't know details of decision WA could take. "I hope that WA will be clear on events to which this decision will refer and why it applies or not.

"This is in hands of WA and in particular CRC (Compliance Review Committee)," Bach ded, making clear decision would be binding on IOC as "a signatory to World Anti-Doping Code".

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'Attack on sport'

WA president Craig Reedie me a presentation Saturday to Olympic Summit, participants of which "strongly condemned those responsible for manipulation of data from Moscow laboratory". "It was agreed that this was an attack on sport and that se actions should le to toughest sanctions against those responsible," IOC said in a statement. "It was stressed by participants that full justice must be finally done so that guilty ones can be properly punished and innocent ones are fully protected." 

IOC asked that Russian authorities deliver "fully aunticated raw data". Former WA president Dick Pound, who chaired commission that produced in 2015 damning accusations of state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics, said Moscow h this time gone "too far". " IOC is a little bit tired about what Russia has been doing and so I see IOC probably focusing more on athletes who are newer," Pound told AFP. "Much of stuff we are looking back now is 2011, 2015. We are years later and many of those athletes are no longer competing and re is a new generation of athlete, many of whom have been regularly tested." 

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Pound acknowledged influential role of Russia -- which in recent years hosted 2014 Winter Olympics as well as Football World Cup in 2018 -- "on many levels" in sporting world. "On field of play, it is a big, important country. With China and United States, it's among sporting giants, so that's influential," he said. "It's (also) influential because Russia hosts and is willing to host many competitions for international federations, especially those who don't have much money of ir own, so y have a considerable influence among international federations. "And y've been quite strategic about making sure that y get Russians into position on international federations. So y have an impact from inside as well as from outside." 

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