December 11, 2019

The "most disgraced country": Russia banned from world sports

topic:	Rule of Law
located:	Russia
editor:	Igor Serebryany

Russia has been thrown to the road shoulder of the world sports by the decision of the WADA to ban its athletes from international competitions for four years.

Thus, WADA punished Russian athletes for the repeated offense committed by the country's anti-doping agency RusADA.

The WADA verdict bars Russia from hosting international competitions and its athletes from participation in such competitions abroad under the national flag. They could only compete under neutral flags, for example that of IOC.

Besides, Russian sports officials, including those from NOC, have been banned from attending international sports events.

This is the only case in history when a country has been banned from global sport twice within one Olympic cycle for the same offense. In 2016 in Rio, Brazil, and in 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the Russian team was prohibited to display national colours as a reprimand for the doping scandal dated back to 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

"We are the most disgraced country in the history of the world sports", commented the WADA ruling Vyacheslav Fetisov, a two-time Olympic champion. Unlike the renowned ice hockey player, the county's top sports and political officials blamed WADA, not RusADA, for Russia's humiliation. President Vladimir Putin was quick to say that WADA's ruling had been "judicially unacceptable".

"WADA's decision contradicts the Olympic Charter and we reserve the right to appeal it in the Permanent Court of Arbitration. WADA doesn't take care of the world sport and Olympic movement. Its motivations are purely political", he said while in Paris for the Normandy Four meeting.

Head of the Russian Senate, Federation Council, Valentina Matvienko and the Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov echoed Putin on Wednesday, saying that Russia will appeal the WADA ruling within three weeks. It is very difficult to understand who to blame for another doping scandal, a member of the Federation Council and doping expert Tatyana Lebedeva says.

"All this looks utterly unexplainable. Russia has already been punished once. Then, the country was given a chance to prove that the Sochi-2014 scandal was just a one-off incident. The Japanese have already allowed the Russian team to take part in the upcoming Olympics under the national flag. And now, the world sees that doping abuse is not an incident but a norm for the Russian sports", she says.

She called the RusADA, Sports Ministry and Investigative Committee in charge of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory not to wage war on WADA but to find out who personally forged the doping tests and who issued such an order.

WADA policy on Russia has been contentious, still, its recent decision does not represent any real disaster, Moscow sports lawyer Alexander Ksenofontov believes. "Legally speaking, WADA has no power in dictating its will to the international sports federations, be it IOC, FIFA or anything else. They all have the final say in whether or not to allow this or that country to participate in their events", he says.

He stresses that WADA restrictions do not apply to the competitions held on a one-on-one basis bypassing international federations auspices. "Russian athletes still can compete with athletes from Belarus or Kazakhstan. They should not be responsible for the sins of this country's sports officials", Ksenofontov notes.