Russia fails to meet deadline for granting lab data access to World Anti-Doping Agency

Moscow has exceeded the deadline of midnight 31 December 2018, to give experts from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) free access to laboratory analysis data involved in the institutional doping scandal, the agency confirmed yesterday.

WADA’s independent Global Code Compliance Committee will meet on January 14 and 15 to discuss the follow-up to this case. The latter could pronounce a non-compliance of the Russian anti-doping agency (Rusada), which could result in a fresh suspension of Russian athletes.

“I am bitterly disappointed,”said WADA President Craig Reedie, who will send the report of the expert mission to Moscow from December 21 to the Compliance Review Committee in the coming days. The Committee is responsible for determining the adherence of national agencies to the World Anti-Doping Code.

On 21 December, this group of experts failed to “complete its missionin time because of a question raised by the Russian authorities, demanding that the equipment used for the extraction of data be in accordance with Russian legislation,“ the AMA said. Despite calls from the president of Rusada, Moscow did not reach out, allowing the deadline to expire.

The recovery of this electronic data was one of two conditions imposed by WADA in exchange for its controversial decision to lift the suspension of Rusada, announced on September 20. The other was to require, on this basis,  a “reanalyses“ of samples before June 30, 2019.

Travis Tygart, head of the US anti-doping agency (Usada) urged WADA to reinstate the suspension imposed on Rusada, calling the country’s return to the sports world a “total joke“. “It’s a joke, a shame for WADA and the global anti-doping system,” he said.