President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Craig Reedy commented on the organization’s decision on sanctions against Russia.

On December 9, the WADA executive committee approved the recommendations of the compliance committee and disqualified the Russian Federation from sports competitions for 4 years for manipulating data from the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory.

“Today’s executive committee decision demonstrates WADA’s determination to act decisively in the face of the Russian doping crisis, thanks to the agency’s active investigative capacity, CRC vision and WADA’s newly acquired ability to recommend meaningful solutions. Together, these qualities allowed the executive committee to make the right decisions at the right time..

For too long, Russian doping has distracted from pure sport. A sharp violation by the Russian authorities of the conditions for the restoration of RUSADA (Russian Anti-Doping Agency), approved by the Executive Committee in September 2018, required a decisive response. This is exactly what was adopted today..

Russia was given the opportunity to put everything in order and reunite with the global anti-doping community for the benefit of its athletes and the unity of sport, but instead it decided to continue to adhere to the position of deception and denial. As a result, WADA reacted in the most decisive way, protecting the rights of Russian athletes, who can prove that they did not participate and did not take advantage of these fraudulent actions, "

He also thanked the members of the compliance committee for their “expert and thoughtful” recommendation..

Thus, Russia will not be allowed to participate in the Olympic Games 2020 (Tokyo), the Olympic Games-2022 (Beijing), the World Cup-2022 (Qatar), the Universiade-2021, the Universiade-2023. Competitors may take part in “clean” neutral flag athletes.

Russia has 21 days to appeal.

Recall that the reason for the disqualification of Russia was the fact that in the transferred data of the Moscow laboratory WADA found manipulations with doping tests of Russian athletes. Some of them have been removed..

Re-examination of suspicious samples and access to the database of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory were prerequisites for the restoration of RUSADA.