iNADO comments on today’s decision of WADA´s Executive Committee

The Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations (iNADO) welcomes today’s unanimous decision of the Executive Committee of WADA (ExCo) to declare RUSADA non-compliant, and to exclude Russian athletes and support personnel for a period of four years from Major Events.

“WADA cleared the first hurdle to sanction the corrupt and systematic manipulation scheme of Russian authorities. Now WADA has to work with all relevant Code signatories to find transparent and uniform rules for the exceptions”, said iNADO CEO Jorge Leyva.

iNADO expects these criteria to:

1. Ensure that all organisations affected implement the recommendations strictly,

2. and require any mechanisms allowing individual Russian athletes to compete as well as any mechanism allowing already awarded competitions to remain in Russia to be; consistent, transparent, and independently verified.

Furthermore, should RUSADA choose to challenge this decision at Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) iNADO hopes that CAS will confirm the sanction without constraints nor delay.

Finally, we note the clear words of condemnation that WADA used to describe this offence. We think this clarity is good for the sport but is the minimum athletes and public can expect to maintain confidence in the global anti-doping system.

Jorge Leyva

CEO, INADO

info@inado.org