Russian anti-doping agency non-compliant: WADA

Russia’s anti-doping agency has been declared non-compliant with the worldwide code as the fall-out from last week’s extraordinary report which found the country had operated a systematic, state-sponsored doping programme continues.

WADA is meeting a week after an independent commission released a report detailing corruption inside Russia’s anti-doping program and its track team. Nobody voted “no”, though it wasn’t clear whether some members abstained as the vote was done by raising hands.

Non-compliance means failing to respond to WADA’s requests for information and as a outcome, organisations can not operate until they become compliant.

On Wednesday, Olympic legend Ed Moses added his voice to calls for Russian track and field athletes to be barred from next year’s Olympics over the scandal. “It could have been an even more incredible moment had I not been up against the amount of doping that was going on in our sport at that time”.

Track and field has been plunged into crisis over a report that uncovered a sophisticated state-supp … “They’re very, very concerned about that”. Earlier, he presented his country’s case.

As well as Alyoshin, who has previously represented Russia in managing UNESCO’s anti-doping fund, the taskforce also contains representatives of the Russian badminton and modern pentathlon federations, the Sports Ministry, lawyers and Olympic gold medal-winning synchronized swimmer Olga Brusnikina.

That is the focus of the second part of the independent commission’s investigation, details of which will be made public in the next two months.

“A WADA expert team will then meet with the task of ensuring the continuation of testing in Russian Federation”.

According to Canadian Richard Pound, the former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency and vice-president of the International Olympic Committee, the recent findings are “the tip of the iceberg”.

“They’ll have to find a new laboratory director that will satisfy the world anti-doping agency as to his or her… willingness to make sure that the laboratory acts independently and is not subject to any pressures regarding the non-disclosure of positive samples”, he said. We’re at a crossroads. “We are ready to rebuild our whole antidoping system”. But no action was taken.

WADA president Craig Reedie told Scott the agency needs to investigate all sports around the world but needs to figure out how to pay for it.

“The theme of the day has clearly been investigations”.

“We saw the tip of the iceberg exposed then”, Moses said.

Scott’s talk delivered the context into a debate about the WADA budget, which would get a 2 or 3 percent increase under normal circumstances.