On Thursday, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) announced that the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) was being reinstated as a compliant organization. This comes after a two-year ban which followed the 2016 McLaren report outlining years of state-organized doping and cheating by RUSADA.
The World Anti-Doping Agency ignored its own rules to reinstate Russia
Russia was asked to follow a roadmap. They didn’t. Now they’re back in.
Photo by Adam Pretty/Getty Images
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
In a series of tweets, WADA shared a quote from Sir Craig Reedie, the organization’s president, that outlined the conditions of the reinstatement:
“Today, the great majority of WADA’s ExCo decided to reinstate RUSADA as compliant with the Code subject to strict conditions, upon recommendation by the Agency’s independent CRC and in accordance with an agreed process. This decision provides a clear timeline by which WADA must be given access to the former Moscow laboratory data and samples with a clear commitment by the ExCo that should this timeline not be met, it would support the CRC’s recommendation to reinstate non-compliance.”
There was a vote to allow Russia back in as a compliant nation, but the vote itself is mired in controversy. The lawyer of the whistleblower who ignited the Russia investigation called the vote “the greatest treachery against clean athletes in Olympic history,” in speaking to the Associated Press.
So what does this mean?
In August 2017, RUSADA was presented with a “Roadmap to Compliance” by WADA, which included a series of mandatory steps to return Russia to being ban-free. Over a year later, all those conditions have not been met, but WADA’s internal review committee overruled the original roadmap, saying that having a “commitment” from RUSADA to open their labs to inspectors was sufficient for reinstatement.
This means an early-return to compliance for RUSADA, without all the safeguards being met, for no apparent reason. The interpretation of WADA’s own roadmap has been fairly loose as well. There were two key instructions that Russia had to follow in order to be allowed back in compliant:
- Publicly accept the findings of the 2016 McLaren Investigation.
- Allow WADA inspectors to examine labs used in Moscow, and the records from the prior doping.
In actuality, a private letter from the Russian Ministry of Sport to WADA was used to satisfy the requirement of public acknowledgement, with nothing being said publicly — and now independent investigators, not WADA itself, will be allowed into the labs. However, nobody has been in the labs at this time, just a promise that it will happen.
The end result is that Russia will be allowed to compete again in the Olympic games as Russia, rather than “Olympics Athletes From Russia,” as was used in the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
WADA has been actively trying to reinstate Russia.
A report from BBC outlines that in May 2018 WADA was trying to reach compromises on its own roadmap to allow Russia to return to compliance early. There was internal acknowledgement that Russia’s private letter to WADA did not fully meet the criteria of “public acknowledgement” WADA asked for initially, but a desire to get Russia back in competition trumped Russia actually meeting the original standards.
We’re left with a situation where WADA capitulated to Russia and RUSADA for little known reason. Numerous people inside WADA were against lifting the ban until Russia met the requirement of the roadmap, with Beckie Scott, chair of the athletes committee, resigning in protest following the announcement that RUSADA would return to compliance.
The International Association of Athletics Federations also opposed a return to compliance by Russia, but their protests were ignored.
Where does this leave us?
WADA is facing an internal crisis over how it has handled Russia’s reinstatement. The original roadmap was agreed upon by both sides, endorsed by anti-doping bodies around the world, and seen as a way to fairly return Russia to competition. However, continual concessions by WADA with little in return have left the perception of the process in tatters. Many believe that internal politics and conflict of interest led to an early reinstatement.
Furthermore, the news of RUSADA’s reinstatement was first broken on Russian news, and there’s rampant speculation on how that occurred. Nick Butler, an investigative journalist and former senior editor for Inside the Games floated one theory.
However, it should be noted that while sources believe hacking could have been used, it’s also likely that a source inside the room leaked the information to Russian news outlets.
In response to WADA’s decision, Travis T. Tygert, CEO of the United States Anti Doping Agency, slammed the decision to circumvent the WADA roadmap and allow Russia back in as a compliant nation.
“Today marked the biggest decision in the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s history, and it delivered a devastating blow to the world’s clean athletes. By ripping up the very ‘Roadmap’ it created, WADA’s decision to reinstate Russia despite the nation not having met the two remaining Roadmap conditions is bewildering and inexplicable. In its landmark meeting today, WADA sent one clear message to the world: we put the wishes of a small handful of sports administrators above the rights of millions of clean athletes and the dreams of billions of sports fans.”
Russia has returned as a compliant organization, and they had to do very little to get there.
See More:
