Lausanne (Switzerland): The World Anti-Doping Agency banned Russia from the global sporting events including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics after accusing Moscow of falsifying data from an anti-doping laboratory on Monday.
The ruling means, Russian athletes will still be allowed to compete at the Tokyo Olympics as neutrals, but only if they can demonstrate that they were not part of what WADA believes was a state-sponsored system of doping.
WADA spokesman James Fitzgerald said that, ‘They will have to prove that they had nothing to do with the non-compliance and that they were not involved in the doping schemes as described by the McLaren report, or they did not have their samples affected by the manipulation’.
The independent McLaren report, released in 2016, revealed the significant extent of state-sponsored doping in Russia around 2011-15.
Curated by Aditya Nayak
