"Several members of the (Executive Committee) voiced their disappointment that the deadline had been missed but agreed that no sanction in that regard should be imposed," WADA President Craig Reedie said. WADA had conditionally lifted a ban on RUSADA in September last year, with one of the conditions being the granting of access to thousands of samples at the tainted Moscow lab by the end of 2018.
But when a WADA team arrived last month, Russian authorities raised issues with the certification of their equipment under Russian law. The data was eventually extracted this month. Reedie and Jonathan Taylor, who heads WADA's Compliance Review Committee (CRC), both said that the agency had followed its rules and precedents set in other cases.
"Data was provided late. Data was provided after the deadline," Taylor said, before adding: "We decided this case should be treated the same as others." Taylor said that under rules adopted last March, WADA had to give non-complaint nations three months to respond to a warning. "As regulators we will adhere to our rules," Reedie said. This is the latest chapter in an affair that surfaced with Richard McLaren's July 2016 report detailing doping in Russia from 2011 to 2015 involving more than 1,000 athletes across more than 30 sports. The Canadian lawyer's damning revelations led to Russia's athletics team being barred from the 2016 Rio Olympics and Russian competitors exiled from the 2018 Winter Games.