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Swiss court hears Russian appeal against Olympic doping ban

MOSCOW (Reuters) – A Swiss court will hear Russia’s appeal on Monday against a four-year ban on its athletes participating in major international events under its own flag on charges of handling laboratory data.

FILE PHOTO: Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin attends a conference to elect a new President of the Russian Athletics Federation at the Russian Olympic Committee building in Moscow, Russia, on Feb.28, 2020. REUTERS / Tatyana Makeyeva

In a four-day hearing, the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) could strip Russian athletes of their flags at the Tokyo Olympics next year.

Russia, which has tried to present itself as a global sporting power, has denied the allegations but has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) showed evidence of mass doping between routes and field athletes.

Many of its athletes have been banned from the last two Olympics, and the country was cleared of its flag at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games as a penalty for state sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Games.

WADA last year declared RUSADA, Russia’s anti-doping agency, non-compliant and imposed a series of sanctions as punishment for Moscow’s manipulation of laboratory data. Russia said inconsistencies with the data were purely technical in nature and the data had not been tampered with.

In addition to a ban on Russians competing under their flag and hearing their national anthem for the next four years – including at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar – the sanctions prohibit Russia from hosting or promoting major sporting events during this time.

WADA accused Russia of planting fake evidence and deleting files related to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug scammers.

Witold Banka, president of WADA, said in a statement last week that he was convinced the agency’s executive committee made the right decision in imposing the sanctions.

RUSADA tweeted with the hashtag #BanCheatsnotCountries and published a video appeal with the message “Give Russian athletes a chance.”

CAS has announced that its arbitration tribunal will begin deliberations after the hearing ends on Thursday and will deliver its verdict at a later date.

RUSADA was initially suspended in 2015 after WADA found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics. The agency was reinstated in September 2018 under certain conditions, only to be declared non-compliant at the end of last year.

Reporting by Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber, Editing of Timothy Heritage

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