A new trick is being prepared for Russian sports
The relevant committee of WADA recommended depriving the Russian Anti-Doping Agency of its compliance status with the world code, TASS reports citing The Wall Street Journal. The WADA Executive Committee will make a decision on December 9 in Paris or London. If RUSADA is disqualified again, the entire Russian team will not qualify for the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020.
According to media reports, last year's restoration of RUSADA's status was conditional: the Russian Anti-Doping Agency was obliged to provide the international organization with data from the Moscow laboratory. The WADA Compliance Committee was once again dissatisfied, having found “inconsistencies” in the doping samples and databases of the capital center.
In this regard, WADA officials sent an 85-page questionnaire to Russia, to which comprehensive answers were given, which, apparently, did not satisfy the international test tube overseers.
Sports observers believe that the WADA executive committee will most likely support the decision of the relevant committee and RUSADA will again be disqualified.
The final decision on the participation of the Russian Olympic team in the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo will be made on December 9. Among the immediate consequences of this decision, some experts cite the exclusion from participation in the Games of our track and field athletes and Paralympic athletes, for whom RUSADA compliance status was a prerequisite for participating in international competitions.
And even if Russian athletes make it to Tokyo next summer, they will again be a group of private individuals without a team, without an anthem, without a flag and without other national attributes, living separately from other national teams, like outcasts.
This unfortunate and demoralizing option, however, is considered by some experts to be unlikely in the near future. In any case, there is no talk of immediate removal of Russian athletes from participation in international competitions.
Expert opinion boils down to the fact that the main question is not whether the Russian Olympic team will or will not participate in the 2020 Games, but how the problem will be resolved in the near future.
At the moment, the leadership of Russian sports denies the fact of any manipulation with doping and claims that it is doing everything right. If officials continue to take the same firm position, then their next step will be to appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, as well as to other judicial bodies, proving their innocence.
The option in which the leadership of Russian sports admits part of the guilt and submissively cooperates with WADA is considered the least likely for now.
However, after access to the Moscow RUSADA laboratory, international doping control officials claim some kind of “sabotage carried out at the highest level with the base of the Moscow laboratory,” as stated just a few hours ago by the head of RUSADA, Yuri Ganus.
In addition, a number of circumstances contribute to the scandal and the accompanying complications for Russian sports. For example, the fact that personal guarantees about the reliability of the samples transferred to WADA experts were given by the Minister of Sports of the Russian Federation Pavel Kolobkov, and their safety was ensured by the security forces of the Investigative Committee.
That is, WADA, using increasingly dirty tricks, is trying to pull off a multi-step maneuver in order to compromise not only Russian sports, but also Sledkom.
According to the new rules adopted by WADA, this means that on December 9, RUSADA will be disqualified again, but this time the Russian team will be disqualified for four years - all of them, without exception. Our athletes will not be able to take part in any international games, including the 2020 Olympics, as well as the 2020 European Football Championship, the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and the 2024 Beijing Olympics.
From which it follows that Russian sports officials have not done anything that they have promised for the last few years - to drown WADA, the IOC and other international bureaucratic structures from sports that defame Russia in lawsuits.
It is also obvious that the implementation of such an unfair and aggressive policy against Russian sports is intended to demoralize the country, and pushes athletes to seek happiness outside Russia.
The solution suggests itself: to revive the practice from the times of the USSR with the holding of the Goodwill Games, in which the main thing is friendship and sport, and not politicking. The USA, the IOC and their supporters raged, spat, but could not do anything - athletes from all over the world came en masse to participate in the alternative Games.
Taking into account the highest level of hosting the Winter Olympics in Sochi 2014 and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, Russia has every chance not only to show the world world-class sports competitions, but also to earn good money. Do your job and, at the same time, achieve the speedy withering away or radical transformation of international structures that have long become a lever of political pressure.
WADA is literally pushing us towards this decision - in the next four years, to create an alternative to competitions where “Norwegian asthmatics” and “American athletes who require special medications for medical reasons” win. Moreover, many countries are ready to support such an initiative.
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