GENEVA (AP) – Russia will not be able to use its name, flag and anthem in the next two Olympics or any World Championships on Thursday following a ruling by the Arbitration for Arbitration Court.
A Lusna-based court has halved a four-year ban proposed by the World Anti-Doping Agency last year in a landmark case accusing Russia of tampering with state-mandated tampering with a database of a testing laboratory in Moscow. The ruling also barred Russia from bidding on major sporting events for more than two years.
Russian athletes and teams will be allowed to compete in next year’s Tokyo Olympics and World Championships, including the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing, as well as the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, if they are suspected or suspected of doping.
A win for Russia is the name of the proposed team in major events. The name “Russia” could be retained on the uniform if the equivalent of words like “neutral athlete” or “neutral team” equals it, the court said.
When the doping history is checked for selection to the Olympics or other sporting events, the burden of proof was shifted from Russian athletes to WADA.
At the main events Russian athletes and teams can maintain the national flag colors of red, white and blue in their uniforms. That was not possible for the Russians in the last two track world championships.
Even with these concessions, allegations of state back doping and cover-ups surfaced after the 2014 Sochi Olympics after three court judges imposed the harshest fines on Russia.
Wada President Vitold Baka applauded the court’s decision despite reducing the selection ban in two years.
Baka said in a statement, “The (CAS) panel has clearly confirmed that Russian authorities shamelessly and illegally manipulated Moscow laboratory data in an attempt to cover up the institutional doping scheme.”
The case focused on allegations that Russian state agencies had deleted parts of the database before handing them over to WADA investigators last year. There is evidence of long-running doping violations.
The CAS process AD was formally between Wada and the Russian anti-doping agency, which last year refused to accept a four-year ban. Russia’s foreign intelligence service has denied the allegations in a statement issued Friday stating “Similar, baseless allegations concerning Russia’s intelligence have been made more than once.
Rusada was also ordered to pay WADA $ 1.27 million to cover the cost of the investigation, in addition to being fined $ 100,000 and ordered to pay 400,000 Swiss francs (2,452,000) towards legal costs.
The Russian agency could appeal the sanctions to the Swiss Supreme Court.
“It seems that not all the arguments presented by our lawyers have been heard,” Rusada’s acting CEO, Mikhail Bukhanov, told a news conference in Moscow.
The judges’ 186-page verdict is expected to be published by CAS in the next few weeks.
In a brief excerpt from the court’s statement, the judges said their decision to impose harsher sentences than Wada wanted “should not, however, be read as recognition of the rhetoric or the behavior of Russian officials.”
The ruling barred Russian government officials, including President Vladimir Putin, from attending major sporting events if invited by the host nation’s prime minister.
When a four-day hearing was held in Lansen last month, 43 Russian athletes and their lawyers argued as a third party that they should not be punished by state officials for misconduct in the sport.
Giving WADA a lab database by the deadline of December 2018 was the main condition for Rusada to be re-launched three months ago when the former was expelled from the anti-doping community.
WADA investigators in Moscow finally found the data a month late. Evidence from doping tests and emails has been deleted or found to have been altered, and whistleblowers such as former lab director Grigory Rodchenkov have been implicated.
WADA investigators went to Moscow two years ago to collect databases and verify evidence that would help game-governing organizations prosecute suspected doping violations that have been going on for several years.
Even if Russia snatches the hosting of the World Championships in the next two years, events can be regained. The Board of Directors is advised to find a new host “unless it is legally or practically impossible to do so.”
Russia will host the 2022 World Championships in men’s volleyball and shooting. The president of the shooting federation is Vladimir Lisin, a billionaire with close ties to the Kremlin.
Last year, the International Olympic Committee called the tampering with the database “flagrant manipulation” and “an insult to the sporting movement.”
On Thursday, the IOC only took note of the ruling, adding that it would consult the sport’s governing body and the International Paralympic Committee “to take a consistent approach to the implementation of the award.”
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