Russia’s supposedly stiff penalty for doping is a ban in name only

TO SPORTS FANS who are vaguely familiar with the saga of Russia’s state-sponsored doping, but who have not paid attention to every twist since the scheme was uncovered in 2014, the latest episode probably seems decisive. And for Vladimir Putin, Russia’s sports-mad president, it is embarrassing and politically damaging. On December 9th the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) prohibited Russia from major sporting events for four years. The ban will apply to next year’s Olympics in Tokyo, the 2022 winter Olympics in Beijing and to that year’s edition of the men’s football World Cup, to be held in Qatar.

WADA’s latest sanction follows its discovery that Russian officials had given it doctored computer files in January. These documents were meant to amount to a full confession of past Russian misdeeds, giving details of every athlete who had been involved in the doping scheme. According to WADA’s investigators, this had implicated over 1,000 athletes and was directed by government ministers, among others. Instead Russia seems to have added insult to injury. A recent report by the agency, seen by the New York Times, reveals that testers in Moscow had fiddled with their records again in late 2018 or early 2019. The documents included fake messages the testers sent between themselves, in an attempt to cover their tracks, and excluded more than 15,000 files containing the “most relevant anti-doping data”. Faced with stark evidence that Russian testers were continuing their cover-up, WADA had little choice but to issue an unprecedented penalty.