Doping issues from 2008 to 2009 In 2008, seven Russian track and field athletes were suspended ahead of the
Summer Olympics in Beijing for manipulating their
urine samples. Multiple Russian biathletes were involved in doping offences in run-up to the
2010 Winter Olympics. The president of the
International Biathlon Union, Anders Besseberg, said, "We are facing systematic doping on a large scale in one of the strongest teams of the world." British journalist Nick Harris said that he contacted the IOC with allegations about
Grigory Rodchenkov's
laboratory in Moscow in early July 2013. with the help of filmmaker
Bryan Fogel, which was documented in the film
Icarus. In March, German broadcaster
ARD aired a documentary called "Russia's Red Herrings", alleging that competitors were alerted about testing plans and offered banned substances by individuals at RUSADA and ARAF. Rodchenkov said that at least fifteen medalists at the
2014 Winter Olympics were involved. The re-analysis programme would eventually conclude in November 2017. Away from the Olympics, Russian heavyweight boxer
Alexander Povetkin and tennis player
Maria Sharapova would both fail drug tests in March and May respectively, both testing positive for
Meldonium. Russian-Finnish footballer
Roman Eremenko would also fail a drugs test later on in the year.
June 2016 An ARD documentary in June 2016 implicated Russian sports minister
Vitaly Mutko in covering up doping by a football player at FK Krasnodar.
July 2016 in
Moscow On 18 July 2016,
Richard McLaren, a Canadian attorney retained by WADA to investigate Rodchenkov's allegations, published a 97-page report covering significant state-sponsored doping in Russia. McLaren stated that urine samples were opened in Sochi in order to swap them "without any evidence to the untrained eye". On 21 July 2016, the
Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) turned down an appeal by the
Russian Olympic Committee and 68 Russian competitors.
August to September 2016 Originally Russia submitted a list of 389 participants for the Rio Olympics competition. On 7 August 2016, the IOC cleared 278 competitors, while 111 were removed because of the scandal (including 67 athletes removed by IAAF before the IOC's decision). , who had been banned for doping, competed in Rio Critics noted that Kuwaitis were banned from competing under their own flag (for a non-doping related matter) while Russians were permitted to do so. Due to governmental interference, Kuwaiti competitors were permitted to enter only as
independent athletes.
Dick Pound stated, "It is not a consistent standard which is being applied now. Not all Kuwait competitors banned from competing in Rio under their own flag were supporters of the regime, and not all South African participants were supporters of
apartheid, but the greater good called for South Africa to be expelled." On 15 November, Berlinger introduced a new design for doping sample bottles. A spokesman later said, "We work with forensic specialists from different nations. We want to always stay a little bit ahead of those cheating but you cannot avoid a system like the Russians built up." On 9 December, McLaren published the second part of
his report. The report claimed that from 2011 to 2015, more than 1,000 Russian competitors in various sports (including summer, winter, and Paralympic sports) benefited from the cover-up. Emails indicate that those who might have benefited from a cover-up included five blind powerlifters, who may have been given drugs without their knowledge, and a fifteen-year-old.
November to December 2017 In November 2017, the IOC disciplinary commission headed by
Denis Oswald imposed its first sanctions after a year-long Sochi investigation. As of 22 December, 43 Russian competitors had been sanctioned and 13 medals had been stripped. On 10 November, the day after Vladimir Putin accused the U.S. of stirring up problems for Russian competitors, WADA said in a news release that it had obtained an electronic file that contained "all testing data" from January 2012 to August 2015 – thousands of drug screenings run on Russian competitors. The database, which the Russian authorities were unwilling to share with antidoping investigators, arrived through a whistleblower. The head of the
Russian Ski Association,
Yelena Välbe, told the press that "whistleblowers are traitors to their country" shortly thereafter. Russia's ski team coach went even further and accused
Ilia Chernousov (a skier who won a bronze medal in the
50 km freestyle event) of "leaking information" to WADA. On 11 November, it was revealed that Grigory Rodchenkov had provided new evidence of Russian state-sponsored doping to the IOC, noting that he would consider going public if the Schmid Commission did not give due weight to his evidence in any public findings. On 16 November, WADA announced that Russia remained non-compliant with its Code. On 26 November,
IAAF decided to maintain Russia's ban from international
track and field competitions, saying the country had not done enough to tackle doping. In an interview with the
New York Times,
Rodchenkov reported that Yuri Nagornykh, the deputy minister of sport, had asked him to incriminate a Ukrainian competitor,
Vita Semerenko, during a competition in
Moscow leading up to the
Olympics. Rodchenkov did not comply, convincing the minister that a retest of the drug sample would show the drugs had been spiked into the sample rather than passed through a human body. "I could not have done this to an innocent athlete," he said. "During my career, I reported many Dirty Samples as clean, but never the other way around."
Official sanctions On 5 December 2017, the IOC announced that the Russian Olympic Committee had been suspended with immediate effect from the 2018 Winter Olympics, but their concession was to allow those Russians with no previous drug violations and a consistent history of drug testing to compete under the
Olympic Flag as an "Olympic Athlete from Russia" (OAR). IOC President
Thomas Bach said that "after following due process [the IOC] has issued proportional sanctions for this systematic manipulation while protecting the clean competitors." As of January 2018, the IOC had identified 43 Russian competitors from the
2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi that it intended to ban from competing in the 2018 Winter Olympics and all other future Olympic Games as part of the
Oswald Commission. All but one of those competitors appealed against their bans to the
Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The court overturned the sanctions on 28 of the appellants, resulting in their Sochi medals and results being reinstated, but the court ruled that there was sufficient evidence against eleven of the competitors to uphold their Sochi sanctions. The IOC issued a statement saying "the result of the CAS decision does not mean that athletes from the group of 28 will be invited to the Games. Not being sanctioned does not automatically confer the privilege of an invitation" and that "this [case] may have a serious impact on the future fight against doping". The IOC found it imperative to point out that the CAS Secretary General "insisted that the CAS decision does not mean that these 28 competitors are innocent" and that they would consider an appeal against the court's decision. The court also downgraded the punishment by deciding that the 39 competitors should only be banned from the 2018 Games, not all future Olympic Games. The remaining three Russian competitors did not appeal their decisions until March 2020 and in September 2020, two of them were cleared of doping whilst the remaining one was found guilty, however all three had their life bans overturned. After the partially successful appeal, 47 Russian competitors and coaches launched a further appeal to the CAS, in a final attempt to secure an invitation to the Games. This appeal was dismissed on 9 February 2018, the day of the opening ceremony, a decision that was welcomed by the IOC. An original pool of 500 Russians was put forward for consideration for the 2018 Games and 111 of them were immediately eliminated from the pool; this included the 43 competitors who had been sanctioned by the Oswald Commission. The remaining 389 were required to meet a number of pre-games conditions, such as a further round of tests and re-analysis of stored samples, and they would only be considered for invitation to the Games providing these requirements were met. The final number of neutral Russian competitors that were invited to compete was 169. However, speed skater
Olga Graf chose not to compete, stating that "the sport has become a bargaining chip in dirty political games", bringing the eventual total to 168.
Reaction in Russia In the past, the
President of Russia,
Vladimir Putin, and other government officials had stated that it would be a humiliation for Russia if its competitors were not allowed to compete at the Olympics under the Russian flag. However, despite rumours to the contrary, his spokesman
Dmitry Peskov later revealed that no boycott had been discussed leading up to the IOC's announcement. After the IOC decision was made public,
Ramzan Kadyrov, the
Head of Chechnya, announced that no
Chechen competitors would be allowed to compete under a neutral flag. On 6 December 2017, Putin confirmed that the Russian government would not prevent any of its competitors from participating at the 2018 Games as individuals, despite there being calls from other leading Russian politicians for a boycott.
Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the
Communist Party of the Russian Federation, put forward a proposal to send fans to the Games with a Soviet
Victory Banner.
Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs,
Sergey Lavrov, commented that the United States "fears honest competition", affirming Vladimir Putin's position that the United States used its influence within the IOC to "orchestrate the doping scandal". According to
Komsomolskaya Pravda, 86% of the Russian population opposed participation in the Winter Olympics under a neutral flag. Many Russians believed that the IOC was retaliating against Russia for their discriminatory
anti-gay law which provoked considerable controversy with the IOC during the
2014 Winter Olympics when it was hosted in
Sochi, Russia. During the
Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in February, two Russian competitors from the
Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR) delegation failed doping tests and were disqualified: curler
Aleksandr Krushelnitckii who won a bronze medal in the mixed doubles event; and bobsleigh pilot
Nadezhda Sergeeva who finished twelfth in the two-woman event. The IOC expressed their disappointment at the positive doping tests and stated that the OAR team would consequently not be allowed to parade under the Russian flag at the closing ceremony. Despite the two disqualifications, the IOC announced on 28 February that it had chosen to reinstate Russia's Olympic membership, just days after the end of the Winter Games, as no more cases of doping had been found in the delegation. The surprise decision to lift the suspension provoked anger among the international sporting community. The IOC had planned all along to reinstate Russia after the Games provided there were no more failed tests. Their statement read "The suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee is automatically lifted with immediate effect."
May to August 2018 In the buildup to the
2018 FIFA World Cup hosted by Russia, lab director and whistleblower
Grigory Rodchenkov said that he recognised one of Russia's players as a doper in one of his own doping programmes. FIFA had opened an inquiry into Russian doping in football after the McLaren report was published with 33 Russian footballers named in it, but said in May that they had found 'insufficient evidence' of doping but said that some cases with players unrelated to the World Cup were ongoing. The tournament eventually concluded with no players failing a drugs test. A few months after the tournament had concluded in September, the father of Russian player
Denis Cheryshev said that his son had been taking
growth hormone during the tournament. He was later cleared of doping by anti-doping authorities. On 20 July, the
Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) released details of 120 doping cases with some 85 of the cases involving Olympic and World Championships medallists and almost half (47.5%) involving Russians. On 27 July, 10 days before the start of the
2018 European Athletics Championships, the IAAF announced that despite making improvements in key areas, Russia would still remain suspended from international athletics competitions. 29 Russian athletes still competed in the championships as
Authorised Neutral Athletes, and Russia eventually topped the medal table of the inaugural
European Championships.
September 2018 The World-Anti Doping Agency voted on 20 September whether or not to re-instate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency after they were suspended in 2015. A WADA compliance review committee had recommended that RUSADA be re-instated, which sparked anger from international competitors and officials. One of the members of the six-person review committee,
Beckie Scott, the chair of WADA'S athletes commission, left her role on the committee in protest over the recommendation to reinstate RUSADA and the vice president of the agency,
Linda Helleland, said that she would vote against their re-admission. A group of competitors from UK-Anti-Doping had earlier called for Russia to remain banned until it had overhauled its Anti-Doping System, saying that Russia's re-admission would be "a catastrophe for clean sport" and a member of US Anti-Doping Agency was quoted as saying 'frankly, it stinks to high heaven'. The former head of the Moscow laboratory turned whistle-blower
Grigory Rodchenkov said that lifting Russia's ban would be a 'catastrophe'. WADA had insisted that Russia meet two criteria before RUSADA could be re-admitted; accept the findings of the McLaren Report and grant access to Moscow's anti-doping laboratory. The compliance review committee had reviewed a letter from the Russian Sports Ministry that said it had 'sufficiently acknowledged the issues identified in Russia' and that they agree to accept the two remaining conditions'. WADA voted unanimously to re-instate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency at their congress in the
Seychelles, going against the wishes of numerous national Anti-Doping agencies around the world. The lawyer for whistle-blower
Grigory Rodchenkov called it "the greatest treachery against clean athletes in Olympic history" whilst US Anti-Doping Agency head Travis Tygart said the decision is "bewildering and inexplicable" and a "devastating blow to the world's clean competitors". The decision received so much criticism that the head of WADA,
Craig Reedie, had to publicly defend the decision as he came under mounting criticism. With RUSADA now re-instated, the Russian Athletics Federation launched a legal challenge to the IAAF to overturn their ban from athletics competitions from which they were still suspended. The IAAF, however, refused the request, which was later withdrawn by the Russian athletics federation. By 26 September, 77 Russians were serving doping bans in the sport of athletics including 72 athletes and five coaches and athlete support personnel.
November to December 2018 It was announced in November that the International Olympic Committee would further re-analyse stored samples from the
2012 Olympics, testing for all banned substances. This came after 48 adverse analytical findings were found in previous re-analysis of samples with 22 of them being Russian On 14 December,
The i newspaper reported from Moscow that officials at the
Russian Ministry of Sport were still reluctant to cooperate fully with WADA over turning over the testing data from its anti-doping laboratory. WADA subsequently released a statement that said their Expert Team had flown to extract the data. Later, it emerged that WADA was unsuccessful in retrieving the data because their equipment had allegedly not been properly certified. The reinstatement of RUSADA prompted allegations of bullying and a call for reform within the World Anti-Doping Agency, however the IAAF decided to uphold Russia's suspension from athletics into 2019 with 63 Russians cleared to compete as neutral athletes for the year. A team of five WADA experts traveled to Moscow on 17 December expected to be given full access to the laboratory, but on arrival, they were refused full access which put RUSADA on the brink of being suspended once more with their president Yuri Ganus appealing personally to Putin for a resolution.
2019 January 2019 WADA had set Russia a strict deadline to hand over data from their Moscow laboratory by 31 December, a deadline which they evidently missed. There were calls for the WADA compliance review committee to meet immediately to consider their next steps, however they decided to meet much later on 14 January which caused anger among the international community with 16 national anti-doping bodies calling for Russia's suspension once more. WADA president Dick Pound described the reaction to their decision as like a "lynch mob". WADA eventually gained full access to the Moscow laboratory on 10 January, 10 days after the initial deadline. The WADA president described it as a "major breakthrough for clean sport" and said that they were now starting their second phase of authentication and review of the data that had been collected to make sure that it had not been compromised and to build strong cases against Russian competitors that might have doped. WADA eventually managed to retrieve 2262 samples from the Moscow lab. Despite missing the deadline, RUSADA was still deemed compliant and was not punished. The Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations (iNADO) said that "Russia has been granted more chances and, ultimately, leniency than any individual competitor or small country could expect to receive. This is very troubling".
February to March 2019 It was announced on 8 February that the
International Paralympic Committee would now re-instate Russia by 15 March after they were suspended in July 2016. They stated that 69 of the 70 reinstatement criteria had been met with the last criterion being to accept the findings of the McLaren report. Meanwhile, Russia's ban in athletics was upheld by the IAAF 'until further notice' stating that there were two outstanding issues that needed to be resolved. On 19 March, France issued arrest warrants for two former Russian athletics officials as part of an investigation into a doping cover-up. The former head of Russian athletics
Valentin Balakhnichev and the ex-coach of the Russian athletics team Alexei Melnikov, who were both banned from the sport for life in 2016, were targeted.
June to July 2019 Russia's 2008 Olympic high jump champion
Andrey Silnov stepped down from his position as the vice-president of the Russian Athletics Federation in June after it was reported that he was under investigation for a possible doping violation following a re-analysis of his sample from 2013. It was also reported that seven Russian track and field athletes, including athletes from the national team, were caught training in
Kyrgyzstan with Vladimir Kazarin, a coach who was banned from the sport for life in 2017 for doping offences. With all of that in mind, Russia was in danger of remaining suspended for the
2019 World Athletics Championships in September after the IAAF voted to uphold their ban, the 11th time they had done so. In July
Reuters reported that two Olympic Russian boxers competed in 2018 while serving doping bans applied by RUSADA. Reuters said this indicated an inconsistency in Russia's reform of its anti-doping practices. After Reuters notified it of the two cases RUSADA said it would investigate. The first cases of possible Anti-Doping violations against Russian competitors' samples taken from the Moscow Laboratory were handed over to the individual sporting federations in July. WADA said that the data of 43 competitors had been handed over out of a target pool of 298. The first sporting federation to suspend competitors from the data received was the International Weightlifting Federation who suspended 12 Russian weightlifters including Olympic, World and European medalists.
September to November 2019 On 21 September, it was widely reported that some of the data retrieved from the Moscow laboratory may have been manipulated and tampered with before it was retrieved by the World Anti-Doping Agency. This meant that Russia would remain suspended from the then-upcoming
2019 World Athletics Championships, and faced a possible ban from hosting and competing in all major sporting events including the upcoming
2020 Olympics and possibly the
2022 Olympics,
2022 FIFA World Cup,
2023 FIFA Women's World Cup and the
2024 Olympics. Two months later, on 21 November, a number of Russian athletics officials were suspended for obstructing and failing to co-operate with an investigation into the whereabouts of high-jumper
Danil Lysenko. President of the Russian Athletics Federation Dmitry Shlyakhtin was suspended along with 6 others associated with RusAF, including the athlete and his coach.
Doping ban WADA then recommended that Russia be declared non-compliant once more and banned from hosting sporting events for four years. On 9 December, WADA banned Russia from major international sporting events for four years, on charges of tampering with doping-related reports. Russia will be barred from hosting, participating in, or establishing bids for international sporting events during this period. As before, WADA will allow cleared Russian competitors to compete neutrally, but not under the Russian flag. This will not affect Russia's co-hosting of
UEFA Euro 2020, as WADA does not recognize
UEFA as a "major event organization" covered by the ban. In regard to this sanction, WADA president Craig Reedie said that "For too long, Russian doping has detracted from clean sport". He also added that "Russia was afforded every opportunity to get its house in order and rejoin the global anti-doping community for the good of its competitors and of the integrity of sport, but it chose instead to continue in its stance of deception and denial". Russia appealed the decision to the
Court of Arbitration for Sport.
2020 January to April 2020 In January 2020, WADA suspended the Moscow laboratory from carrying out its only remaining accreditation, analysis of blood samples. The Moscow laboratory had been allowed to carry out analysis of blood samples since May 2016 as "practically impossible for laboratories to interfere with the blood variables of samples due to the nature of the analytical equipment and the athlete biological passport principles in place". In March, World Athletics announced that no more than 10 Russian track and field athletes would be allowed to compete as neutrals at the summer's Olympics. It also fined the Russian Athletics Federation $10 million due to the obstruction and forgery of documents relating to the doping case of Danil Lysenko and stated that all Russian neutrals would be banned if half of the fine was not paid by 1 July. The
2020 Summer Olympics were later delayed until 2021 due to the ongoing
COVID-19 pandemic. On 30 April, WADA announced that they had completed their 'painstaking' investigation of the 298 Russian competitors whose data they had received from the Moscow laboratory in January 2019. The first data was handed over in July and a total of 27 international sporting federations and one major event organisation received the data in order to decide on possible anti-doping violations being brought forward.
July to December 2020 The Russian athletics federation failed to pay half of its $10 million World Athletics fine by 1 July. RusAF's chief, Yevgeny Yurchenko, stated that the federation did not have the sufficient funds to pay the fine. RusAF avoided expulsion from World Athletics after the Russian Sports Minister
Oleg Matytsin made an 'unconditional' guarantee to pay the fine by a new deadline of 15 August. Russia paid the fine of $5 million and $1.31 million in costs three days before the set deadline and avoided expulsion by doing so. In a case that was described as 'almost identical' to that of Danil Lysenko, Russian figure skater
Maria Sotskova was handed a 10-year ban from the sport by RUSADA for submitting a forged medical document in relation to her three missed doping tests and the presence of a prohibited substance in her body. The
Court of Arbitration for Sport, on review of Russia's appeal of its case from WADA, ruled on 17 December to reduce the penalty that WADA had placed. Instead of banning Russia from sporting events, the ruling allowed Russia to participate at the Olympics and other international events, but for a period of two years, athletes and teams who were to represent Russia are not allowed to use the Russian name, flag, or anthem, and are instead required to present themselves as "Neutral Athlete" or "Neutral Team". The ruling does allow for their uniforms to display "Russia" on the uniform but only up to equal predominance as the "Neutral Athlete/Team" designation, as well as the use of the Russian flag colors within the uniform's design. However, the ruling also clarified that the sanctions do extend to any official World Championship and, subsequently, racing drivers from Russia are unable to officially represent Russia in FIA-sanctioned World Championships as long as the sanctions are in place.
2021 The IOC announced on 19 February 2021 that Russia would compete in both the
2020 Summer Olympics (which was postponed to 2021 due to the
COVID-19 pandemic in Russia) and
2022 Winter Olympics under the acronym "ROC", after the name of the Russian Olympic Committee. However, the name of the committee itself in full could not be used to refer to the delegation. The ROC team would be represented by the flag of the Russian Olympic Committee. On 22 April, the IOC approved a fragment of
Pyotr Tchaikovsky's
Piano Concerto No. 1 to be used in place of the Russian national anthem. At the 2020 Summer Olympics, no more than ten Russians were allowed to compete in the
Athletics competition and no more than two Russians (one male and one female) were allowed to compete in the
Weightlifting competition due to doping. Two qualified Russian rowers,
Nikita Morgachyov and
Pavel Sorin, were replaced in the rowing team after testing positive for the banned substance
Meldonium and two qualified Russian swimmers,
Veronika Andrusenko and
Aleksandr Kudashev, were removed from the swimming team based on evidence from the Moscow Anti-Doping laboratory. On appeal to CAS, Andrusenko and Kudashev were reinstated to the swimming squad and cleared to compete. Only one doping violation related to Russians competing at the Olympics was recorded. Triathlete
Igor Andreyevich Polyanski tested positive for
Erythropoietin (EPO) in an out of competition test five days before he competed at the Olympics.
2022 The medal ceremony for the Olympic
figure skating team event, where the ROC won gold, originally scheduled for 8 February, was delayed over what
International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesperson Mark Adams described as a situation that required "legal consultation" with the
International Skating Union. Several media outlets reported on 9 February that the issue was over a positive test for
trimetazidine by the ROC's
Kamila Valieva, which was officially confirmed on 11 February. Valieva's sample in question was taken by the
Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) at the
2022 Russian Figure Skating Championships on 25 December, but the sample was not analyzed at the
World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) laboratory where it was sent for testing until 8 February, one day after the team event concluded. Valieva was assessed a provisional suspension after her positive result. But upon appeal, she was cleared by RUSADA's independent Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee (DAC) on 9 February, just a day after receiving the provisional suspension. Following formal appeals lodged by the IOC, the
International Skating Union (ISU), and WADA to review RUSADA DAC's decision, the CAS was expected to hear the case on 13 February with a decision scheduled for announcement on 14 February ahead of her scheduled appearance in the women's singles event beginning 15 February. Due to Valieva being a minor at the time, as well as being classified as a "protected person" under WADA guidelines, RUSADA and the IOC announced on 12 February that they would broaden the scope of their respective investigations to include members of her entourage (e.g., coaches, team doctors, etc.). On 14 February, the CAS ruled that Valieva would be allowed to compete in the women’s single event, deciding that preventing her from competing "would cause her irreparable harm in the circumstances", though her gold medal in the team event was still under consideration. The favorable decision from the court was made in part due to her age, as minor athletes are subject to different rules than adult athletes.
2023 On 23 March 2023, World Athletics announced that Russia's doping suspension had been lifted nearly seven and a half years after they were suspended in November 2015. However, Russian athletes would still be banned due to the ongoing
Russian invasion of Ukraine. == International competitions ==