The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday sentenced Russia to two years of exclusion from major world competitions for violating anti-doping rules.
Russian athletes will also be able to participate in competitions by lining up under a neutral banner.
Russia is excluded for two years from major world competitions, including the Tokyo Summer Olympics in 2021 and the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022, for violating anti-doping rules, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS ).
The possibility of lining up under a neutral banner
The three referees appointed by CAS have halved the sanction proposed last year by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which was to be four years, while leaving Russian athletes never sanctioned for doping the possibility of themselves. line up under neutral banner.
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The "consequences" of Russian cheating, the large-scale rigging of computer data from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, "are not as great as WADA wanted," the arbitrators admit in their decision.
To justify their leniency, they say they have "taken into account questions of proportionality" of the sanctions, "and in particular, the need to promote a culture change and to encourage the next generation of Russian athletes to participate in international sport. clean".
Clearly, athletes were largely preserved from the collective sanction demanded by WADA and which initially included three editions of the Olympic Games, until Paris-2024, potentially ending the careers of many of them.
One million euros to be reimbursed by the Russian anti-doping agency
If the suspension applies until December 16, 2022, its effects on the World Cup which will end in Qatar two days later are not yet clear: Russian athletes can certainly compete under a neutral banner, but the press release from TAS does not specify how this tolerance can be applied to team sports.
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In addition, the court ordered Rusada, the Russian anti-doping agency, to pay 1.27 million dollars (approximately one million euros) to WADA to reimburse the expertises carried out since January 2019 on the rigging of laboratory data. from Moscow.
The world anti-doping policeman had already committed nearly $ 4 million (3.3 million euros) in 2015 and 2016 in two other doping investigations
institutionalized in Russia, and in particular on the cheating set up during the 2014 Olympics in Sochi with the help of the Russian secret services.