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Russia is banned (again)


Ikarus360

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So yeah, this just happened.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/dec/09/russia-banned-from-tokyo-olympics-and-football-world-cup?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

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Russia banned from Tokyo Olympics and football World Cup

The World Anti-Doping Agency has voted unanimously to ban Russia from international sport for four years for doping offences.

Russia now have 21 days to appeal against the sentence, which would see the country banned from participating at next summer’s Olympics in Tokyo and the Qatar 2022 World Cup.

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They will, however, still be able compete in next year’s European football championships, where they will also be one of the host countries. Individual Russian athletes will furthermore be able to compete under a neutral banner at the Olympics, providing they can prove they are drug free. Under similar conditions, 30 Russians competed at this year’s World Athletics Championships as “Authorized Neutral Athletes”.

The new punishment was agreed at a special meeting convened at the headquarters of the International Olympic Committee in Lausanne, Switzerland. It is the most severe sanction yet against the country, which has been accused of running a systemic doping programme and deleting crucial laboratory evidence.

Wada’s president Sir Craig Reedie said: “For too long, Russian doping has detracted from clean sport. Russia was afforded every opportunity to get its house in order and re-join the global anti-doping community for the good of its athletes and of the integrity of sport, but it chose instead to continue in its stance of deception and denial.

“As a result, the Wada ExCo has responded in the strongest possible terms, while protecting the rights of Russian athletes that can prove that they were not involved and did not benefit from these fraudulent acts.”

Evidence of wide-spread Russian doping was first revealed by Wada four years ago with a report claiming that at least 643 positive tests had been hidden by authorities. That resulted in the suspension of the Russian Athletics Federation (Rusaf) and 111 individual athletes being banned from the 2016 games in Rio.

Last year Wada made the controversial decision to reinstate the Russian anti-doping agency (Rusada) on the condition that it complied with requests to share its laboratory results. Those results were subsequently found to have been tampered with, and led to renewed calls for punishment. “Flagrant manipulation” of the Moscow lab data was “an insult to the sporting movement worldwide,” the IOC said last month.

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If Russia, as is likely, does choose to appeal the punishment, it will subsequently be referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

 

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I understand why WADA has to do this but it really, really stinks that clean Russian athletes are likely going to lose a lot of the sponsorship revenue they desperately need to live on while virtually all of the people guilty of the mess in Sochi will get taken care of by the Kremlin and various oligarchs. Welcome to life in Russia, I guess.

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On 12/9/2019 at 1:00 PM, Nacre said:

I understand why WADA has to do this but it really, really stinks that clean Russian athletes are likely going to lose a lot of the sponsorship revenue they desperately need to live on while virtually all of the people guilty of the mess in Sochi will get taken care of by the Kremlin and various oligarchs. Welcome to life in Russia, I guess.

Agree entirely. Roots of this can be at least traced leading to over a decade ago with the disappointing performance in Vancouver. Likely even earlier...  

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  • 4 months later...

Once again proves the Soviet (Commie Party) Russian character - virulent, vindictive and destructive.  I'll never forget when I worked at the UN in New York.  WHen we had our orientation session with my group (this was 1983, so Leonid Brezhnev's time), there were two young Soviet appartchiks as new clerks that season.  We knew the 2 were KBG agents.  They could not do eye-to-eye contact with their new fellow employees.  It was really quite telling.  (Even though my boss in Protocol was a long-time Soviet emplyee at the UN.  He was already very cosmopolitan and had a trophy wife.) 

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