Exclusive: Wada could extend Russia drugs ban to include all sports
Plans to exile Russia completely from world sport were being drawn up by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s own athlete committee on Tuesday night as the backlash against the “Groundhog Day” ban on the country intensified.
Members of the committee are due to stage a conference call on Wednesday to consider lodging an appeal against the leniency of the four-year bar on the country hosting global sporting events or competing at them under its own flag.
Wada on Monday ignored calls from half of that committee, among others, to ban all Russians from the world stage over the country’s cover-up of state-sponsored cheating at events including the London and Sochi Olympics and Paralympics.
It was condemned for doing so, with the chief executive of the United States Anti-Doping Agency, Travis Tygart, branding the decision “Groundhog Day” for clean athletes.
Wada’s athlete committee could now seek to appeal it at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, raising the prospect of two conflicting appeals there if Russia also tries to get it overturned.
Victoria Aggar, a member of the committee and head of the British Athletes Commission, said: “We will have a conversation about an appeal for a stronger sanction with members of the Wada athlete committee.
“We have a conference call tomorrow, that will be on the agenda and it will be brought up for discussion for sure. Our reasoning for a blanket ban is that, although a four-year sanction may sound enough, it’s pretty weak in reality.
“It doesn’t feel that the punishment was strong enough for the crime.”
That ban was in danger of being further undermined last night after Wada was unable to confirm whether it covered Formula 1’s Russian Grand Prix.
Major doubt had already been cast on the credibility of the punishment when it emerged it would not apply to football’s European Championship next summer or their subsequent 2022 World Cup qualifiers.
That was compounded on Tuesday by uncertainty over the extent to which the sanctions would cover one of the world’s other richest sports.
A spokesman for Wada told Telegraph Sport it was trying to confirm what – if any – aspects of the punishment would apply. The race’s promoter, Rosgonki, was quick to issue a statement on Monday branding moving it “legally and technically impossible” after Wada’s ban ordered the withdrawal of any world championships awarded to Russia “unless it is legally or practically impossible to do so”.
Rosgonki made no mention of a possible bar on the country’s flag and anthem or of another of the sanctions imposed by Wada that prevents Kremlin officials attending events covered by the ban. That includes president Vladimir Putin, who was absent from September’s race at the Sochi Autodrom – won by Lewis Hamilton – but was present at the previous five and had even presented Hamilton with the winners’ trophy.
The FIA, F1’s governing body and the sport’s designated Wada code signatory, did not respond on Tuesday to a request for comment on the ban.
Putin, meanwhile, has threatened to order an appeal against it, questioning whether it was motivated by “political considerations”.
But the Kremlin came under fire from within on Tuesday after one of Russia’s biggest athletics stars accused it of failing to contain a scandal dating back five years. In an open letter, three-time high-jump world champion Maria Lasitskene wrote: “Have we conducted an internal investigation? Who has been punished – I mean, apart from the athletes who were caught red-handed and five or six officials or coaches?” Lasitskene, forced to miss the 2016 Olympics after Russia’s entire track-and-field team was barred over the scandal, also wondered “why coaches whose athletes have been caught doping are still working and why officials are still falsifying official documents?”
Meanwhile, Sepp Blatter on Tuesday categorically denied he was bribed to ensure Russia was awarded last year’s World Cup.
The US Department of Justice published details of a 2011 report by a former British intelligence officer summarising an alleged conversation between Putin and then Russian president Dmitry Medvedev in which the former was said to have acknowledged a Russian oligarch had bribed the then Fifa president so his country could win the right to host the tournament.
