The Russian Anti-Doping Agency will resume testing later this month after a month-long hiatus due to government initiatives to slow the spread of COVID-19, the agency announced Wednesday.
“We are now waiting for the latest recommendations by the World Anti-Doping Agency [WADA],” RUSADA director general Yuri Ganus said in an online press conference. “We will begin testing work from the last ten days of May.”
Doping control officers will wear personal protective equipment when testing does resume.
RUSADA’s plan to return to in-person testing differs from that of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Last month, in response to the pandemic, USADA launched an at-home testing initiative that allows athletes to collect their own blood and urine samples, with parts of the process observed via video calling. Olympians Ryan Murphy, Katie Ledecky and Lilly King are among the athletes to test-run the pilot program.
RUSADA was suspended in 2015 after WADA found evidence of widespread doping among Russian athletes. The organization was conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but then was declared non-compliant in late 2019 after WADA found that the Moscow lab had manipulated data.
Last month, Russian sports minister Oleg Matytsin stated that in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, international sporting authorities should “turn a new page” and World Anti-Doping Agency handing Russia a four-year ban from international competition. The ban was announced in December 2019, barring Russia from competing at any major international sporting event for a four-year period. Russian athletes who have not been found guilty of doping are still able to compete unattached, and the nation has appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for sport.
Testing new concoctions, that is.