MONTREAL (AP) — After Olympic officials ignored their advice to suspend Russia from the Rio Games, World Anti-Doping Agency leaders are looking to fast-track new rules that could prevent a similar scenario for future Games.
WADA’s foundation board approved a plan Thursday that could give the agency new powers to suspend a country’s Olympic federation for egregious anti-doping violations. If enacted at the next board meeting, the rules would go on the books during the Olympics next February, though they would come into play too late for the PyeongChang Winter Games.
Still, for WADA, it’s an unusually urgent move, one that was sparked by the Russian doping scandal and the International Olympic Committee’s decision to disregard WADA’s recommendation that the entire Russian Olympic team be banned from Rio.
If the changes are approved, the IOC, along with national Olympic committees and anti-doping agencies, would have to adhere to a new system of sanctions, subject to appeals. The guidelines call for athletes from a non-compliant country to be ineligible if that country’s Olympic committee or anti-doping agency make a deliberate attempt to circumvent anti-doping rules.
This is the sort of change that would normally wait until the next rewriting of the WADA code, which would go into effect in 2021. Instead, the board heeded compliance review committee chairman Jonathan Taylor’s call for a quick review and a vote on the new rules at the November board meeting. From there, WADA regulations call for a three-month wait until the rules go on the books.
“It can get done. It’s not rocket science,” said Dick Pound, the Canadian member of the IOC and WADA, whose report on doping corruption inside the Russian track team led that sport’s international federation to suspend the team from Rio.
The IOC decision in Rio thrust the fate of Russian athletes into the hands of leaders of the individual sports federations, which allowed 271 of them to participate.
With the Winter Games nine months away, the IOC is in the middle of two investigations based on information from a report by Richard McLaren. McLaren’ report, delivered in December, found evidence of wide-scale doping corruption in Russia, including switching of drug-tainted urine samples with clean ones at the Sochi Winter Games.
It appears any decision about Russia’s eligibility for PyeongChang will be made under current rules.
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