GENEVA (AP) – Russia will not be able to use its name, flag and anthem at the next two Olympics or any world championships for the next two years following a ruling on Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The Lausanne-based court halved the four-year ban proposed last year by the World Anti-Doping Agency in a landmark case accusing Russia of manipulating a database of testing laboratories in Moscow. The ruling also prevented Russia from bidding to host major sporting events for two years.
Russian athletes and teams will be allowed to compete in next year’s Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, as well as in world championships, including the 2022 Qatar World Cup, if they are not involved. in doping or on the positive test cover.
A win for Russia is the name of the team proposed at major events. The name “Russia” can be kept on uniforms if the words “Neutral Athlete” or equivalent like “Neutral Team” have the same prominence, the court said.
The burden of the test also drifted away from Russian athletes and more towards the AMA when it comes to examining their doping history for selection at the Olympics or other sporting events.
Russian athletes and teams can also keep the colors of the national flag red, white and blue on their uniforms at major events. This was not possible for the Russians of the last two track world championships.
Even with these concessions, the three court judges imposed the most severe sanctions on Russia since state-backed doping and cover-up allegations emerged after the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
WADA President Witold Bańka welcomed the court’s decision despite the ban being reduced to two years.
“The panel (CAS) has clearly confirmed our findings that the Russian authorities blatantly and illegally manipulated Moscow Laboratory data in an effort to cover up an institutionalized doping scheme,” Bańka said in a communiqué.
The case focused on allegations that Russian state agencies altered and deleted parts of the database before handing it over to AMA investigators last year. It contained probable evidence to prosecute long-standing doping offenses.
The CAS trial was formally between the AMA and the Russian anti-doping agency, which refused to accept last year’s four-year ban. The Russian agency, known as Rusada, was found incomplete last year, a decision confirmed Thursday by three judges.
Rusada was also ordered to pay $ 1.27 million to the AMA.
The 186-page judges ’resolution is expected to be published in the coming weeks.
The Russian agency may appeal the sanctions to the Swiss Supreme Court in Lausanne.
Last month, when a four-day hearing was held in Lausanne, Russian athletes and their lawyers participated as third parties arguing that they should not be punished for misconduct by state officials who did not work in the field. sports.
Giving the WADA the lab database before the December 2018 deadline was a key condition for Rusada to be reinstated three months earlier when a previous expulsion from the anti-doping community was lifted.
Moscow WADA researchers finally got the data a month late. It appears that doping tests and emails have been deleted or changed, and the complainants were involved.
The ruling allows Russian government officials, including President Vladimir Putin, to attend major sporting events if invited by the head of state of the host nation.
WADA researchers went to Moscow two years ago to collect the database and begin verifying evidence that would help sports governing bodies prosecute alleged doping violations over several years.
Although Russia would be deprived of hosting world championships in the next two years, events can recover. Governing bodies have been advised to find a new host “unless it is legally or virtually impossible to do so”.
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