Doping. Russia still banned by the International Athletics Federation

Russia is by far the major nation of doping at the Olympic Games and in major athletics championships, as revealed by the numbers of cases recorded in the history of these competitions. Since the disintegration of the USSR in 1991, 326 cases of doping have affected the various Summer and Winter Games, of which 89 involve Russian athletes, or 27% of the total.

The International Athletics Federation (IAAF) decided on Tuesday in Monaco to maintain the suspension of Russia, which has been underway for three years and the revelation of a vast doping scandal, despite the recent hand extended by the World Anti-Doping Agency ( WADA).

The IAAF still has not swallowed the pill

The IAAF, the last emblematic institution to ban Russia, therefore chooses a strict line, while the Russian flag has not appeared in an international athletics competition since the Beijing World Championships in 2015. More and more athletes however, Russian citizens are allowed to compete under a neutral banner. They were 72 at the European Championships in Berlin in August.

The IAAF still requires two conditions before the reinstatement of the Russian Federation (Rusaf): access to data from the anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, the scene of mass fraud between 2011 and 2015, and the payment by Russia of the costs generated by the treatment of the Russian scandal.

In the closed door of a cozy lounge at the Méridien Hotel in Monaco, on the banks of the Larvotto beach, the 27-member IAAF Council voted in accordance with the recommendations of the Task Force , dedicated to the assessment of Russian progress in the fight against doping.

For the ninth time since November 2015, the beginning of revelations on a sprawling institutional doping system, Russia sees its suspension extended. But Tuesday, Russian athletics seemed close to a comeback after the reinstatement in September of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) by the AMA, which had issued criteria similar to those of the IAAF for a Russian return.

World athletics body IAAF upholding ban against Russia's athletics federation over doping https://t.co/ZCv9PnpLJI pic.twitter.com/bVbi0wngLS

The reverse of AMA

Unlike WADA, the IAAF felt that data should be provided before reinstatement, not the other way around. "IAU (Athletics Integrity Unit) must confirm that we have received all the data and samples it needs," before returning to Russia, Rune Andersen, the head of the Task Force , told reporters. Strength.

The IAAF also requires the payment of the costs generated by the treatment of the scandal, namely the functioning of the Task Force which is dedicated to it, the costs related to the cases to be defended before the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), etc. It has hoped that "Russia will take all the necessary steps, step by step, to fulfill both conditions" .

WADA had been strongly criticized for a "political" decision deemed lax.

The undisputed champion of Russia

In this regard, Russia is far ahead of the other most sanctioned countries, Belarus (27 cases), Ukraine (23), Turkey (17), the United States (15) and Kazakhstan (13) .

As a result of these doping cases, the Russians had 41 Olympic medals, of which 10 were gold, which is a third of the total (123) of the medals lost over the period. Again, Russia is well ahead of other nations, Belarus lost 11 medals (including 2 titles), the United States 10 (6 titles), Kazakhstan 9 (5 titles) and Ukraine 9 (1 title).

Russian athletics has been particularly penalized, it accounts for more than half of Russian doping cases at the Olympics (49 out of 89), and more than a third of its lost medals (18 out of 41). after IAAF and IAU (Athletics Integrity Unit) data, nearly 200 doping cases were sanctioned, of which more than a quarter involved Russian athletes.

Lifetime bans on 28 Russian athletes are overturned, throwing the International Olympic Committee's policy on Russia doping into chaos just over a week before the start of the Winter Games https://t.co/WSTSzMYvmc pic.twitter.com/XvQnDNqjP7

Institutionalized doping between 2011 and 2015

The figures are particularly alarming between 2011 and 2015, during which time institutionalized doping was set up in Russia with the involvement of the Ministry of Sports, the Russian anti-doping authorities and the secret service (FSB), according to the report of the Canadian jurist Richard McLaren, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

The two Oswald and Schmid commissions, set up by the IOC, confirmed these conclusions. There are 42 Russian doping cases at the London Games in 2012, most of them revealed since 2016 and a wave of reanalysis of the athletes' samples by the IOC.

For the 2014 Sochi Olympics, 16 Russian doping cases were revealed by the Oswald commission, (28 other athletes initially sanctioned were laundered by the CAS).