KEIR RADNEDGE REPORTS: The World Anti-Doping Agency has repeated its criticism of the decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport in the Russian doping case.
In December CAS reduced from four years to two years the original sanction against the Russia and its anti-doping agency RUSADA.
This original ruling saw Russia’s name, flag and anthem banned from the next two Olympics and any world championships for two years while government representatives are also barred from attending Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022 and world championships unless invited by the prime minister or head of state of the host country.
CAS has now published its full written judgment which reveals some distance between the critical opinions of the three-man panel and the reduction of sentence which they imposed.
In one section it stated that the non-compliance “could hardly be more serious”, that the forensic evidence was “damning” and that Russian officials had offered explanations that were “wholly inadequate, unconvincing and far-fetched.”
WADA president Witold Bańka said: “The full CAS reasoned decision shows clearly that WADA successfully proved its case and exposed the Russian authorities’ brazen attempts to manipulate data from the Moscow Laboratory in an effort to thwart our investigations.
“We remain disappointed, however, that CAS did not agree with all of our proposed consequences, which we felt were proportionate to the egregious nature of the offences committed by the Russian authorities as they sought to cover up the details of their institutionalized doping scheme.”
WADA did concede that this CAS decision related specifically to the manipulation of data in the Moscow Laboratory by the Russian authorities and did not relate to the broader Russian doping scandal whose genesis dated back to 2010.
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