AMA Ends Anti-Doping Agency's Ban on the Olympics in Russia

In 2015, the World Anti-Doping Agency suspended Russia's anti-doping agency in the face of overwhelming evidence that the government was conducting a sophisticated doping operation for its best athletes. To this day, despite Russia's inability to meet the basic conditions of its suspension and the indignation of the athletes and the WADA Vice-President, this ban is over.

A group of WADA experts originally planned to recommend Russia's reinstatement because its government refused to recognize its involvement in the doping plot or to allow investigators to access the data and laboratory samples held. But instead, the WADA fell back, allowing Russia to conclude a plea agreement for a less serious offense. "In a spirit of compromise, we want to make a proposal," said WADA President Craig Reedie and Managing Director Olivier Niggli in a letter obtained by the BBC. Instead of formally accepting the findings of independent investigators regarding the government's involvement in athlete doping, Russia has been allowed to continue to challenge this evidence and to accept a lesser conclusion from a non-independent group sponsored by the Committee. International Olympic Committee. Russia has "sufficiently acknowledged" its failures, the WADA committee said. If you say so!

At least one member of the WADA compliance review committee resigned immediately after the decision, and his own vice president, Linda Helleland, said that the WADA had "failed the athletes." of the world ". The US government must withdraw its funding from WADA, The Guardian called the biggest crisis of the World Agency.

The decision almost guarantees that Russia will be allowed to participate in future Olympic events. Of course, they have never been banned from the competition – 168 of them were at the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, they had to suffer the grave injustice of marching under a flag of different color. Now, their official Russian uniforms will be back, but it is not certain that they are still doping or not. As always, the real lesson is that AMA is corrupt, useless or both.