Lausanne (AFP)

Controversial giant of world sport, Russia has been challenging since Monday before the sports courts its exclusion from major competitions, claimed for four years by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) after a cascade of cheating.

For this unparalleled dispute in the 36 years of existence of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the world doping policeman had requested a public hearing, allowing an open debate on this state doping case worthy of the sports rivalries of the War. cold.

But for lack of agreement between the parties, the three arbitrators appointed by the CAS began at 08:00 GMT the closed-door examination of this case until Friday, finally by videoconference because of the health situation, before rendering their decision. at an undisclosed date.

The stakes are high for Russian athletes, threatened by four years without prestigious competitions.

Only those who demonstrate their absence of recourse to doping will be able to compete, according to modalities which remain to be specified.

Founded in 1999 in the wake of the Festina scandal, WADA has for its part deployed unprecedented investigative efforts, and is playing its credibility at a time when the United States threatens to cut it off in order to lead its own global crusade against the doping.

- Double manipulation -

Finally, the International Olympic Committee and the federations are expecting clear directives from the CAS, eight months from the Tokyo Olympics, in order to avoid the mess of recent years in the Russian dossier.

Indeed, just before the Rio Games in 2016, WADA had recommended the exclusion of Russian athletes refused by the IOC, while a few days before the opening of the Pyeongchang Games in 2018, the CAS had shut out 28 athletes. Russians suspended for life by the IOC.

But the legal framework is clear this time, since it is a question of validating or not the panoply of sanctions proposed in December 2019 by WADA and refused by the Russian anti-doping agency, Rusada, due to the rigging of the computer files of the Moscow anti-doping laboratory for the period 2011-2015.

After demanding these data to ensure Russian good faith, the Montreal sleuths discovered two types of manipulation: the removal of multiple traces of positive doping controls, and the introduction of false exchanges aimed at compromising Grigory Rodchenkov, ex -laboratory director who became WADA's main informant, and two of his assistants.

The anti-doping gendarme therefore drew from the range of sanctions provided for by the "ISCCS", a text added in April 2018 to his arsenal: he intends to ban the Russian flag for four years from major sporting events, including the Olympic Games in Tokyo, Beijing (winter / 2022) and Paris (summer / 2024), and prohibit the country from organizing any on its soil.

- Mouse holes in Sochi -

And if this computer fraud has so exasperated WADA, it is because the Russian litigation has been going on since 2010, involves the secret services and the Russian Ministry of Sports, and has fueled tensions between Moscow and sports bodies perceived as instruments. of Western domination.

"We prevent, by means not very sporty, our athletes from achieving the success they deserve," said Vladimir Poutine in October.

"You know what the coaches say in these cases: when playing away, you should not whine but hit the head harder than the opponents."

Ten years ago, Russian middle-distance runner Yuliya Stepanova and her husband Vitaly, ex-controller of Rusada, alerted WADA to institutionalized doping in Russia, then turned to German channel ARD by feeding a series of damning documentaries.

The scandal had turned into a spy novel when Grigory Rodchenkov, forced to resign from the Moscow laboratory and a refugee in the United States, confessed in spring 2016 to having orchestrated the cover-up of Russian doping in coordination with the Ministry of Sports, then headed by Vitaly Mutko, a relative of Vladimir Putin.

To mislead WADA observers at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, the scientist explained, his team was stealing urine bottles from Russian athletes through a "mouse hole" leading to a member of the FSB, the Russian secret service.

The spy, disguised as a cleaner, unsealed the supposedly tamper-proof cap with a bent surgeon's tool for the occasion, then replaced the contents with "clean" urine stored beforehand.

© 2020 AFP