The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has completed investigations into 298 Russian athletes and has handed case packages to 28 other organizations for further action.
The cases come out of WADA‘s retrieval of data from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory. WADA‘s independent Intelligence and Investigations team used the data (along with the McLaren Report) to create a target pool of 298 Russian athletes to investigate for potential doping violations. WADA says in a press release that it has created separate cases against each of the 298 athletes.
WADA sent those cases to 28 different organizations that will decide on case-by-cases bases whether to bring anti-doping violations against each athlete. WADA says the list of 28 is made up of 27 international federations (sport governing bodies like FINA) and one “major event organization.”
Some potential next steps, according to that press release:
- The international federations will use the case packets from WADA to decide whether to bring anti-doping rules violations against each athlete.
- When the federations issue a decision, WADA says it will “review the decisions” and appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) if it needs to.
- If federations do not issue a timely decision, WADA can bring a case directly to CAS as well.
It’s not clear which federations are included in the group of 28, but at some point, we should start seeing sports governing bodies issuing decisions against some or all of the 298 athletes, who are not yet named.
With so many athletes there’s bound to be at least one swimmer, diver, or even water polo player
We’ll hopefully learn the facts sooner rather than later – though generally I agree that a group that large will most likely bisect different sports.
I have found it interesting that in all of the retests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, where tons of athletes have come up dirty, I don’t think any aquatic athletes have been dinged.
Weightlifting, Wrestling and Athletics will probably be the Top 3 in the dirty list.