Russia Risks Missing Olympics as Doping Ruling Looms

(Bloomberg) -- Just over a year after Russia overturned an international sporting ban, it risks a new doping suspension that could bar it from next year's Summer Olympics in Tokyo as well as the 2022 World Cup and Winter Olympics.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is to consider action against Russia at a Dec. 9 meeting in Paris after the body's compliance review panel recommended the country be suspended again, it said in a statement. The renewed crisis for Russian sport comes after WADA found anomalies in drug test results recovered from a Moscow laboratory in January as part of an agreement to lift the three-year ban in September 2018.

Russian track and field athletes were barred from the 2016 Summer Olympics and Russian athletes weren't allowed to compete under their own flag at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The sanctions against Russia were in response to a massive state-backed doping program that enabled the country to take first place in the medal count in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Russia's anti-doping chief, Yuriy Ganus, has been outspoken about the latest doping violations, saying last month in interviews with Russian media that thousands of test results handed over to WADA had been altered. Ganus accused unidentified influential former athletes of being behind the deception, warning of severe consequences including suspension from the 2020 and 2022 Olympics. Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov has denied any wrongdoing by Russia, insisting earlier this month that the Montreal-based body had not found any “manipulation” of the doping tests.

The continuing scandal is an embarrassment for President Vladimir Putin, who complained after the original doping program was uncovered that sport was being turned into a tool of “geopolitical pressure” linked to Western efforts to isolate Russia. An independent investigation commissioned by WADA found that Russian sports officials oversaw a vast program to manipulate doping test results from 2011 to 2015, and that athletes' positive urine samples were swapped out during the Sochi Olympics.

The revelations were backed up by testimony from a whistleblower, Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Russia's anti-doping laboratory, who fled to the U.S. WADA said earlier this year that it had identified differences between the samples recovered in January from the Moscow laboratory and a set of data provided by Rodchenkov.

The world anti-doping body, which has warned of “stringent sanctions” if Russia is found to have tampered with the results, in mid-September gave Russian authorities three weeks to respond. WADA's Compliance Review Committee recommended Friday that Russia be declared in non-compliance with anti-doping rules and face “serious consequences.”

Under WADA rules, Russia's team could be excluded from the Olympics and other major international sports events hosted by bodies that have signed up to its anti-doping code, including global soccer organization FIFA. If a ban is adopted on Dec. 9, Russia will have the right to appeal to the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.

To contact the reporter on this story: Henry Meyer in Moscow at hmeyer4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Torrey Clark

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