The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes' Commission called on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Friday to undertake prompt measures on the status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) as the latter allegedly had failed to provide access to the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory's data.
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 04th January, 2019) The International Olympic Committee (IOC) Athletes' Commission called on the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Friday to undertake prompt measures on the status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) as the latter allegedly had failed to provide access to the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory's data.The WADA mission, led by independent expert Jose Antonio Pascual, finished its visit to Moscow on December 21. The mission was tasked with retrieving raw data from the information management system of the Moscow laboratory, but has not managed to complete the task in time. Since the deadline has not been met, WADA said in a statement on Tuesday that CRC would present recommendations to the WADA Executive Committee on the status of RUSADA after its January session.
"We expect the CRC [WADA's Compliance Review Committee] in its meeting of 14 and 15 January 2019 to make the appropriate recommendations to the WADA Executive Committee in the light of its decision of September 2018. These recommendations should lead to immediate measures and actions," the statement read.
The commission noted that even though it supported the reinstatement of RUSADA, it is "extremely disappointed and concerned" that the data from the Moscow laboratory has not been handed over on time.
"In the meantime, the IOC Athletes' Commission will meet in Lausanne on 14 January and we have put this topic on top of our agenda, as we have done for all our meetings in the past three years. During this meeting we will evaluate all the information at hand and will discuss how as athlete representatives we can support and facilitate any actions to be taken," the commission added.
In 2015, WADA accused Russia of multiple doping violations and declared RUSADA non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code. Russian officials have refuted the allegations of the state-run doping program, while admitting that Russian sports did have some issues with doping abuse.
On September 20, 2018, the great majority of the WADA Executive Committee voted to reinstate RUSADA as an organization that complies with the World Anti-Doping Code, while stressing that WADA could roll back RUSADA's non-compliance if the Russian agency failed to give WADA access to the data and samples of Moscow anti-doping laboratory, which was at the heart of the doping scandal, by December 31, 2018.
