CAS uphold Russia’s four-year ban over doping

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has upheld Russia’s four-year ban from all international sport due to the country’s doping failures.

The New York Times however reports that the ban has been cut in half and now stands at two years and states that CAS will confirm the reduction at 3pm.

The sanctions will still force Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag – without the country’s flag or national anthem – at the Tokyo Olympics in the summer and the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022.

It also means Russia’s football team will not be able to compete at the FIFA World Cup in two years’ time in Qatar, more than 24 months after they hosted the last tournament.

The country was banned from the world’s top sporting events and from hosting international competitions including the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics for four years last December for tampering with doping tests.

The World Anti-Doping Agency Executive Committee acted 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.

“For too long, Russian doping has detracted from clean sport,” said WADA president Craig Reedie at the time, adding that the actions of Russia – who deny the allegations – had demanded a robust response.

RUSADA had 21 days following the ruling to appeal the four-year package of sanctions and did so shortly after Christmas.

The matter was then referred to CAS, with hearings taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, last month between November 2 and November 5, and now the decision has been made to uphold but reduce the ban.

Last year’s ruling followed a judgement in September 2019 when Russia’s Anti Doping Agency (RUSADA) was declared non-compliant for manipulating laboratory data of drug tests handed over to WADA investigators in January 2019.

The latest news comes after Russian whistleblower Grigory Rodchenkov revealed earlier this year that the country “has cheated for decades”.

The autobiography of former Moscow lab boss-turned-whistleblower claimed that the Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics because they had such a huge problem that USSR politicians feared international exposure and drugs shame if they took part.

“I knowingly defrauded the world’s anti-doping authorities for more than a decade [as head of WADA’s Moscow lab], both for the greater ‘glory’ of Russian athletes and also to satisfy sports bureaucrats who were bent on perpetuating Russia’s sporting success,” Rodchenkov wrote.

He added: “I justified my actions by explaining that there had never been any real doping control in the Soviet Union or in Russia so I was continuing along a well-trodden path.

“In some countries there is a stigma associated with using steroids but that was never the case in Russia.”