Is WADA's Russia ban sufficient?

Andreas Lo analyses whether the ban on Russia to compete in world sporting events was sufficient in improving the doping culture

You might have heard in the news that Russia was recently officially banned from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and 2022 World Cup after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) had imposed a four-year ban on Russia's sporting committee for an ‘extremely serious case of noncompliance with the requirement to provide an authentic copy of the Moscow data, with several aggravating features.’ It probably isn’t the first time that Russia has been in the headlines for having its athletes being excluded from world sporting events under its own flag, and so it does make us question whether simply banning Russia again is actually a good solution to prevent doping in the future. Only being reinstated in 2018, Russia has been at the centre of the doping scandal once again a year later. WADA president Craig Reedie said in a statement that ‘For too long, Russian doping has detracted from clean sport.’ He also argued that Russia has been given every chance to change and re-join the global anti-doping community, only to be found them continuing ‘in its stance of deception and denial’. The fact that Russia has again violated rules illustrates they just aren't ready to come clean yet, and this scandal has also led to criticism on why WADA reinstated Russia in the first place. WADA defended the act to reinstate Russia in 2018, saying its compliance review committee received assurances from the Russian sports minister, Pavel Kolobkov, who stated the country had ‘sufficiently acknowledged’ failures. Yet it all seemed very bizarre how WADA could easily be swayed by a single comment and softened their original criteria so that RUSADA (Russia's anti-doping agency) could be reinstituted, despite the anti-doping agency in Moscow not being able to meet two of them: an acknowledgement of the severity of its violations, and the release of data and samples from the Moscow Laboratory, the heart of the illicit operations. WADA’s feeble decision has completely undermined its explicit purpose of the ban: to keep world sports clean, and this immediately sparked outrage across different countries in the world, saying Russia hasn’t sufficiently proved itself to be completely free from doping, and that such a large anti-doping agency could turn a blind eye to false test results. Travis Tygart, CEO of US’ Anti-Doping Agency has spoken out about his frustration, accusing the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of having ‘orchestrated a path for this decision to be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS)’, and thereby setting up CAS as the failsafe to enforce weaker consequences against those athletes. On the other hand, Linda Helleland, the most outgoing vice president and often, a lone voice in WADA in speaking against Russia, was visibly disappointed, saying she ‘wanted a complete ban’.

Despite having a firm four-year ban this time round, after all it’s doubtful whether this is simply enough to prevent any more doping in the future. Arguably, the fact that neither RUSADA nor the Russian government wanted to take the blame is

"This is the biggest sports scandal the world has ever seen."

Russian Opening Ceremony for the 2010 Winter Olympics

symptomatic of their reluctance to admit to any wrongdoings or change their anti-doping culture, in which Russia has been running a state-funded doping program for years. This proves that Russia wasn’t ready to make the next step, and become a sporting power as President Vladmir Putin had hoped. Furthermore, there are grey areas in this ban, in that Russian athletes can still compete in world sporting competitions as long as they can prove themselves clean of drugs. However, Russia’s cynical data-tampering, has muddied the water over who was guilty of doping. In addition, Russia could still host, and compete in Europe’s quadrennial soccer championship this summer, as it is more of a continental competition, and the 2022 World Cup would still host the Russian team, as long as the team members are cleared of doping, but again, the results could be manipulated. This clearly illustrates the significant loopholes in the WADA ban on Russia, as the Russians are still allowed to compete, and the government could still get their way around and continue to fund these athletes with doping while obfuscating evidence. In reality, at least at this present moment, this reflects Russia’s mendacity in their efforts to rehabilitate their sporting program, and their refusal to cooperate with WADA to push for becoming a clean sporting nation. Frankly, more needs to be done to improve the doping culture in sports, and a ban is just the minimum. WADA ought to take a firmer stance, although, this doping culture cannot possibly be fully eliminated before the Russian government takes any step in abolishing its state-funded program and be more truthful to the world.

"Finally, fraud, lies and falsifications of unspeakable proportions have been punished in full swing"