In a major setback for Russia, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) on Monday banned the nation from Olympics and world championships in a range of sports for manipulating laboratory data.
As a result, Russia will be not participating from global sporting events such as the Tokyo Olympics next year and the soccer World Cup in Qatar in 2022.
According to reports, the move came after WADA’s executive committee concluded that Moscow had tampered with laboratory data by planting fake evidence and deleting files linked to positive doping tests that could have helped identify drug cheats.
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The WADA committee’s decision to punish Russia with a ban was unanimous, the spokesperson was quoted in a report.
Russia, which has tried to showcase itself as a global sports power, has been embroiled in doping scandals since a 2015 report commissioned by WADA found evidence of mass doping in Russian athletics.