WADA Double-Standards: Call for Russia’s Olympic Ban Isn’t ‘Random Act’

On Monday, a WADA commission issued a report accusing Russia of numerous violations of global anti-doping codes and called for the suspension of Russia from international athletic events, including the 2016 Olympic Games.

"I have enough experience to say that this wasn't a random act," Foa said.

He also added that it's absurd that the WADA report revealed only the names of Russian athletes, meanwhile the names of athletes from other countries were kept in secret. It was a strange decision indeed.

WADA could have waited until the investigation process, currently taking place in France, is over and then publish the whole report revealing the names of every athlete who was caught cheating. That would have been a fair game to everyone, Foa argued.

Furthermore, WADA's call for the suspension of the entire Russian team from the 2016 Olympic Games is bizarre, because individual athletes from many different countries get caught using performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) all the time, but WADA never called for the suspension of an entire team from participating in Olympic Games.

In fact, the last time an entire nation was suspended from an Olympic event was back in 1988 when North Korea boycotted the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul. And before that of course there were the 1980 Olympics in Moscow and the 1984 Games in Los Angeles, when both the Soviet Union and the United States and their allies boycotted events on each other's turf.

Back in those years, there were serious political circumstances that led to the boycotts and suspensions, but when there is a situation when a nation is asked to withdraw from the Olympic Games simply due to its individual athletes accused of doping, it isn't the right thing to do by any stretch of the imagination.

The Russian Ministry of Sport said Tuesday it would carefully examine the facts and conclusions contained within a report by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) independent commission, and take appropriate action.

It all started when the German broadcaster ARD aired a documentary film in which it was claimed that a number of Russian athletes who won gold and silver at the 2012 London Olympics allegedly bribed officials to conceal the results of their doping tests on the eve of the games. The WADA's Independent Commission (IC) opened an investigation into the allegations with the results its inquiry released on Monday.