UK Anti-Doping welcomes progress in WADA’s Russia investigation

WADA

UK Anti-Doping (UKAD) has welcomed the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA’s) announcement that it has successfully provided the first batch of cases to International Federations (IFs) as part of its Russia investigation.

Following the WADA Executive Committee’s decision to reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) as compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code, one of the strict conditions to its reinstatement was to provide WADA with a copy of its Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), associated raw data and samples from the former Moscow laboratory.

The mission to retrieve this data, conducted by WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations (I&I) team, was successful and for a number of months now the WADA I&I team has been working tirelessly on interpreting the data. Data packages have now been passed onto IFs for the results management stage.

UKAD Chief Executive, Nicole Sapstead said: “This is a welcomed development in the investigation and an important one in terms of Russia’s compliance.

“We are now ever-closer to receiving justice for clean athletes and it is certainly a step in the right direction for public confidence in clean sport worldwide and the all-important level playing field for athletes everywhere. In addition to prosecuting those cheating athletes, this step will also exclude from sport the individuals trusted to support athletes and that have broken the rules, such as support staff and administrators.

“This latest development is testament to the work of the WADA team in extracting and processing the vast amount of data obtained from the Moscow laboratory. The transparency from WADA on the progress of the investigation is also appreciated. We now look forward to the progress made at the results management stage and the sanctions that follow.”

For more information on the three phases of the RUSADA Compliance Process, see WADA’s process flowchart.

In 2018, UKAD launched a new four-year Strategic Plan. The plan has four core objectives including ‘Influence anti-doping decision-making’. Through UKAD’s international strategy, joint working between key partners and institutions develops effective contributions to rules, and policies to raise the global standards of anti-doping.