According to ARD doping expert Hajo Seppelt, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) will declarethe Russian Anti-Doping Agency “not code compliant” at the organization’s upcoming meeting this week in Seoul, South Korea. Seppelt delivered this news in a short video on the ARD webite, which you can see in its entirety here.
In the video, Seppelt argues that WADA will continue to call the Russian anti-doping agency non-compliant because of two main reasons: 1) Russia still denies that they had a long-running state-sponsored doping program and 2) WADA still had no access to Russian testing samples from previous years and thus cannot verify their validity.
Seppelt also notes that WADA is now also in possession of a new database of information that includes information on thousands of Russian athletes. This data, which is still currently under review by WADA, could lead to evidence that the doping system set up in Russia was larger than even initially expected and has gone on for multiple Olympic cycles.
This ruling could lead to the Russians being excluded from the upcoming 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang which are set to begin in February.
UPDATE 11/16: WADA officially declared Russia and RUSADA non-compliant Thursday. Despite following most of the steps laid out to regain full status, RUSADA has yet to make all requested data available to WADA, hence the ruling.
WADA’s compliance review committee (CRC) unanimously recommended that decision.
“It’s absolutely the right decision, as sad as it may be, because all athletes deserve better than this,” U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement, according to USA TODAY Sports. “With all eyes focused on them, now is the time for a change of heart, in order to win this for clean athletes.”
The IOC Executive Board will meet Dec. 5-7 to determine whether Russian athletes will be eligible for the Winter Olympic Games this coming February. The IOC did not exclude Russia from the 2016 Olympics in Rio, but both the International Paralympic Committee and the International Association of Athletics Federations have said they will not reinstate Russia from suspensions until WADA declares the country’s anti-doping system compliant.
The ARD and USA TODAY Sports contributed to this report.
If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck…..
Let’s hope they are serious and follow through on this one. Mr Putin has a strong record of changing people’s minds.
The trouble is WADA are not innocent either…
Tony MacGuinness methinks you are right on that one. Power corrupts and total power corrupts totally.
It is annoying that these basic facts are omitted or buried.
Having heard Craig Reedie speak I found that WADA is effectively a political organisation with a heavy western Atlantic (i.e. American) bias.
So, in essence a stick with which to beat the Russians, and occasionally the chinese.