Moscow (AFP)

The head of Russian anti-doping expects Russia to be deprived of Olympic competitions in 2020 and 2022, denouncing the role of the authorities in falsifying data forwarded to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

"The Olympic team of the Russian Federation will be deprived of full participation in the Tokyo Olympics, and I think that will be the case also in China.The athletes will not participate under their flag and full in Tokyo That's what I think, "said in an interview with AFP the head of Rusada, Yuri Ganous.

Russia has already been banned from several international competitions in recent years due to an institutional doping scandal. Therefore, at best, a limited participation "of some of our athletes by invitation" is possible, as at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, judge the official.

According to him, as in South Korea, the Russian flag will not be hoisted at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Japan and Winter 2022 in Beijing.

Other sanctions expected: restrictions in the organization of international competitions in Russia, exclusion of Russian nationals from international federations and fines.

- State plot? -

In September, WADA had asked Russia to explain "inconsistencies" in the electronic anti-doping data of the former Moscow laboratory, suggesting manipulation.

However, the transmission of these data in early 2018, a gesture of transparency, was to mark the return to a relationship of trust, after the scandal linked to institutional doping that has plagued the country from 2011 to 2015 with the help of said laboratory.

While Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov sent his replies to WADA on October 8, Yuri Ganous says the scale of the manipulation is such that the explanation will probably be insufficient.

He admits, however, that the government did not give him this report.

On Wednesday, WADA's Compliance Review Committee (CRC), which has the authority to recommend sanctions, is scheduled to meet with experts who have worked on the case.

Sitting in her office in Moscow decorated with posters promoting clean sport and words of support from her foreign counterparts, Yuri Ganous says that Rusada is a stranger to the case because she did not have access to the offending database .

For him, senior officials committed the package because the data were "under the control of the Committee of Investigation" Russian.

This powerful judicial institution conducts criminal investigations against officials of the former laboratory involved in institutional doping.

Russia thus drinks three times the "chalice": the future of the sport is mortgaged, "the criminal investigation is ruined" and "the authority of the State" is discredited because the return of Russia to the international competitions was erected in priority.

Mr. Ganous implies that some leaders wanted to protect champions whose use of banned substances would otherwise have been discovered.

"What were the names (athletes)? What did these data show? What is in this database is information related to the analysis (anti-doping) of athletes," he says.

And "who were these people who were able to penetrate the committee of inquiry, what state prerogatives they had? It is very serious", he adds, seeming to evoke a conspiracy of state, especially as the manipulations took place "the day before the transfer (of data) to the AMA".

- Putin's support? -

"It's a blow to the current generation of athletes and generations to come", "a tragedy".

For this reason, he says, he is multiplying attacks on sports authorities and accuses the Russian media of trying to discredit him or to invent a Western conspiracy.

"All my statements are aimed at making the right decisions, Russia can not continue with these old methods."

"We have to get rid of the idea that the West is trying to put pressure on ... Russia needs to put its house in order," he says.

It takes "new leaders of sports organizations," said Mr. Ganous, "including" a new Minister of Sports.

In this fight, "I am waiting for support from President Vladimir Putin.

For Yuri Ganous, who was supposed to get his country out of the woods when he took the helm of Rusada in 2017, Russia is at a crossroads.

© 2019 AFP