Top Russian officials decried the recommendations by a World Anti-Doping Agency committee to suspend Russia from international competition over tainted athlete doping probes — the latest in a drawn out saga over accusations of Russian state sponsored doping that has roiled global sport since 2014.
Russian athletes, unsurprisingly, joined in expressing bitterness about the WADA recommendations. But while some argued the suggested WADA penalties were unduly harsh, others blamed a failure in Russian sport leadership for risking their chance to compete in the next two Olympic Games and perhaps beyond.
The recommendations, issued by WADA’s Compliance Review Committee on Monday, alleged evidence of tampering of some 2000 athlete probes at Moscow’s RUSADA testing facility, and called for a four-year suspension of Russia from international competition, including the Olympic Games.
Reacting to the pronouncement at a news conference on Tuesday, Russia Minister of Sport
In this file photo dated Wednesday, July 24, 2019, Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov speaks to the media in Moscow, Russia. Russia has sent a formal response to the World Anti-Doping Agency, Tuesday Oct. 8, 2019.The charges, argued Lavrov, were carried out by those who “wish to show Russia as guilty in anything and everything.”
The Kremlin was more sanguine. A spokesman merely noted that President Vladimir Putin — who has gladly cast Russia’s return to sporting glory as a symbol of the country’s rising global status under his 19-year rule — had no plans to meet with government sporting officials over the issue.
WADA is expected to make a final decision regarding the committee’s recommendations on December 9. Whatever the outcome, Russia would have a right to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport for a final ruling.
Athletes react
Yet athlete anger was also palpable — with leading athletes lashing out at both WADA and Russia’s sporting bureaucracy for failing to lift a doping cloud that has hung over Russian athletics ever since a 2015 WADA investigation detailed widespread cheating at international events.
Indeed, just days prior to this week’s WADA committee recommendations, World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body formally known as the IAAF, provisionally suspended top figures from Russia’s Track and Field for helping champion Russian high jumper Danil Lysenko avoid doping tests earlier this year.
The charges prompted the immediate full suspension of efforts to reinstatement Russia’s track and field association following its 2015 suspension. Until the most recent violation, the talks reportedly had been making headway.
In a letter addressed to Russia’s Minister of Sport and head of Russia’s Olympic Committee, acclaimed high jumper