DISINFO: World Anti-Doping Agency recommendations are UK's revenge for 2018 FIFA World Cup
SUMMARY
No proof for the allegations made by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s committee was presented to the public so far. There are many theories why Russian sport continues to be ‘bullied’. Foremost, Russia is a strong sporting country, this is why others are scared of it and this is why the suspension of Russian athletes is beneficial to them. Russian representatives sit in many international sport federations and many dislike this too. The severity of penalties for guilty countries is different. No calls to suspend Norwegian or Americans for the doping scandals in winter sport and athletics were made. At the same time, the Russian doping scandal has become mainstream in the international sport community. Another version says that the whole doping story is revenge, organised by upset Englishmen for Russia’s winning the bid to host the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
RESPONSE
This is a mix of conspiracies aimed to misrepresent the actual reasons behind the WADA's investigation, which are consistent with a recurring pro-Kremlin narrative about the West's deliberate anti-Russian activities. On 25 November 2019, one of WADA's key committees recommended that Russia face a four-year ban from global sports and new restrictions on its athletes and teams at next year’s Tokyo Olympics, subject to WADA's board review in December. WADA reinstated Russia’s anti-doping agency in 2018 but reserved the right to issue stronger punishments if Russia did not provide athletes’ testing data from the Moscow laboratory. Earlier, the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang in 2018 due to the systemic manipulation of anti-doping rules during the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi. Individual athletes from Russia competed under the Olympic flag. "Three years ago, Russia was caught running one of the most sophisticated doping programmes in sports history," New York Times writes. The difference between the suggested punishment for the Russian doping case, on the one hand, and the US and Norwegian doping cases, on the other, is that Russia has been accused of running a state-backed, systematic doping programme. See earlier disinformation cases alleging that there is no evidence that Russian athletes used doping and that banning Russia from the Olympics is a modern form of racism.