In lifting the ban, the AMA shows that she cares much more about Russia than doping.

Barry Svrluga

A sports columnist with experience in rhythm writing on baseball, golf, NFL, college basketball and college football

These are the conditions that the World Anti-Doping Agency has placed on its Russian counterpart for this country to be reintegrated in good faith to international competition: Admit that you led a state-sponsored doping team before the 2014 Olympics Games. Officials have access to the Moscow laboratory where hundreds of samples have been falsified.

Here is what officials of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency admitted: Nothing. Here is the amount of access provided to the laboratory in question: None.

So, WADA reinstated RUSADA on Thursday, ending a nearly three-year ban that seemed dramatic at the time, but another joke to the global effort to put a clean sport in place.

Do not insult your pranks of garden varieties by including them.

To be clear, it's not really what you think about improving performance in the sport. This should be a sophisticated discussion that informs the rules of the international sports community. This is the application of existing rules and the entity responsible for doing so.

Most – the vast majority? – Athletes adhere to these rules and they simply can not compete for the same prizes as those who do not. And if the people who put the rules in place do not succeed in applying them, the faith of the supporters of the rule is at least shaken. At this point, really, it's broken.

Even before WADA's predictable decision, athletes are angry.

"By making commitments and not demonstrating their compliance, WADA's decision to re-establish RUSADA would weaken the increasingly delicate integrity of international sport," wrote a group of a dozen athletes to the president. AMA, Craig Reedie. "Ignoring the established conditions does not take into account the voice of the athlete who claims a fair and equitable playing field."

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Keep in mind: this was sent earlier this week. To this day, this increasingly delicate integrity is based on pieces on the floor.

The WADA decision was taken in a vote of its executive committee at a meeting in Seychelles. (Apparently, the Dayton Convention Center was booked.) Reedie, a Scotsman. What does Reedie do again? Well, he supervised the International Badminton Federation. Hmm. Wait. What is it? Let it double to be sure. . . Well, what do you know? He is a member of the International Olympic Committee, the group that organizes the Olympic Games and – oh, I do not know – desperately needs Russia to participate to maximize its income.

At the bottom of the list, note the members of the WADA Executive Committee who also serve the IOC and you will find Danka Bartekova from Slovakia, Patrick Baumann from Switzerland and Ugur Erdener from Turkey. How is it going? Police and developers only do one.

Thus, people who play an active role and invested in the organization of the future Olympics want Russia, one of the few countries willing to host the Games in the future, participates at the future Olympic Games. And if it means returning the conditions imposed on Russia to be restored later, well, so be it. It would be infuriating if it was not predictable.

"This is a bigger problem than simply restoring Russia," said Travis Tygart, CEO of the US Anti-Doping Agency, in a phone interview. "We really want to know what kind of AMA we all want to become. Do we want him to be the one who has billions of sports fans who want fair play and millions of clean athletes who demand it? Or do we want a toothless tiger that is the puppet of a handful of IOC sports ministers?

This is not an Olympic year, so the ramifications of Russian reintegration are not really needed now. Can you even say where will the next Olympic Games be? They have the impression of popping up every two years, and the problems that bother them follow them in the spotlight, and then they go to cover again. Which is great if you run the AMA or the IOC – or both.

But the athletes who are striving to reach the Tokyo Summer Games in 2020 (did you have that?) Or the Beijing Winter Games in 2022 (you missed that) spent the week taking the noisiest decision possible. The decision was telegraphed last week, when the WADA Compliance Committee of six people recommended the reinstatement of RUSADA. This led Beckie Scott, a former cross-country skier from Canada, to resign from her position.

Come back, however. WADA said that for Russia to be restored, it must accept the findings of Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, whose scathing 2016 report described the passions of passers-by through the wall that preceded the Sochi Games. When IOC leader Thomas Bach met Russian President Vladimir Putin at the World Cup in Putin's territory, it was possible to say that it was going to happen.

The IOC then issued a statement in which it was stated that "the reinstatement of RUSADA by WADA was of utmost importance". They did not accept the McLaren report at that time. They have not accepted it now. This part, apparently, was not important. The return of Russia in the game was.

You think that WADA members who also serve the IOC have not read that?

"The whole process really did lead to the result," said Tygart.

In WADA's first draft statement, Reedie said the "decision provides a clear timetable for WADA to have access to data and samples from the former Moscow laboratory".

Does it not seem that we have heard this before? The reality is that no matter what AMA says or what AMA does. The current system does not work. The police department needs a new leader and new agents, people are not responsible for running local businesses. Until then, no matter if you care about doping in the sport, the faith of the athletes will remain broken and it will color all the competitions.