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Russia was banned from the world’s top sporting events for four years this week, Reuters reported Monday. The events include the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, 2022 Beijing Winter Games and the 2022 soccer World Cup.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) executive committee in Switzerland moved to ban the nation’s athletes from the competitions after concluding that Moscow had planted fake evidence and deleted files linked to positive doping tests in laboratory data that could have helped identify drug cheats. Russia can appeal any sanctions imposed by WADA to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Anti-doping officials recommended the four year ban before following through with implementing it, in a saga that has dragged on since the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The New York Times reported in 2016 that the chief of the laboratory that tested thousands of Olympians acknowledged developing a mixture of banned drugs to help Russian athletes beat the system. Grigory Rodchenkov, the lab chief, told the Times at least 15 Russian medal winners participated in a program that also saw as many as 100 positive tests destroyed during the Games along the Black Sea.
Before doping allegations surfaced at the 2014 Winter Olympics, Russian medalists who competed in the 2012 Summer Olympics in London were similarly accused; WADA recommended lifetime bans. At the 2002 Winter Olympics, Russian cross-country skier Larissa Lazutina lost her historic sixth gold medal two hours after winning it. Her Olympic career ended in disgrace after IOC officials announced she, a teammate and a Spanish Nordic skier tested positive for a newly marketed blood-boosting drug.
Russia’s history of cheating in international sports competitions stretches back at least three decades. After the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea, Russian magazine Smena reported that the Soviet team was pretested aboard the ship Mikhail Sholokhov, docked 60 miles offshore from Korea.
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