Russia escapes complete sporting exile despite four-year ban from Wada

Russia has been hit with a four-year ban from using its flag, anthem and team name at the Olympics and World Cup, but the nation has escaped total sporting exile over fresh doping data breaches.

The recommendations of Wada's Compliance Review Committee (CRC) for sanctions which stop short of a blanket ban on athletes were unanimously approved by the governing body's executive, despite the admission from vice president Linda Helleland that the proposed punishment was insufficient.

The Russia flag and anthem will now be refused at events such as the Tokyo 2020 and football's 2022 World Cup in Qatar, but athletes who can prove they are untainted by the doping scandal will be able to compete under a neutral flag. Helleland said the ban was "not enough".

"I wanted sanctions that cannot be watered down," she said. "We owe it to the clean athletes to implement the sanctions as strongly as possible." As previously disclosed by Telegraph Sport, Russian athletes only face exile from the world stage as a direct result of the recommendations if they have been implicated in the scandal first exposed five years ago.

Formal notice of punishment for the country’s ongoing cover-up of sport’s worst drugs scandal will now be sent to the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada), alleging non-compliance with the World Anti-Doping Code for failing to provide an “authentic” copy of Moscow anti-doping laboratory data.

Russia - who will still be allowed to compete at Euro 2020 - now have several months to appeal as the matter will be referred to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for final adjudication.

The CRC had discovered data was manipulated before being handed over to investigators, as required under conditions for reinstating Rusada’s compliance with the code in September 2018.

However, Russia will escape exile from football’s European Championship – the world’s third-biggest sporting event – next summer, and the 2021 Champions League final will remain in St ­Petersburg.

Those calling for total exile prior to Monday's meeting in Switzerland argued Russia's falsifying of data proved that similarly piecemeal sanctions imposed at last year’s Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, at which most of its athletes took part under the umbrella “Olympic Athletes from Russia”, have failed to change its behaviour.

The Wada ban could still end up being watered down in the face of opposition from the International Olympic Committee to the very concept of collective punishment, including to a blanket ban on Russia hosting global events.

A majority of the members of Wada’s athletes’ committee said on Sunday they “strongly believe the only appropriate response is a complete ban on Russian participation”. On Friday, the athletes’ commission of UK Anti-Doping called for a “total ban of Russian athletes in all competitions until the international community of athletes, sports bodies and supporters have confidence that cheating on this scale has been eliminated and that integrity in sport can begin to be ­restored”.

The proposed sanctions had ­already been branded “inadequate” by sport’s anti-doping crusader-in-chief, Travis Tygart. Even Rob Koehler, the former deputy director general of Wada, denounced the proposed sanctions as “another smoke-and-mirrors ­exercise”.

Whatever punishment is imposed could be appealed by Russia, whose foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has dismissed all this as another attempt by the West to sideline his nation.

A total of 168 Russian athletes competed under a neutral flag at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang after the country was banned following the 2014 Games, which it hosted in Sochi.