Russia takes 4-year doping ban battle to top sports court

Russia will attempt to overturn its four-year ban from international sport this week in the latest chapter of a long-running and controversial saga over its doping scandal.

Global anti-doping body WADA in December last year declared the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) to be non-compliant after being accused of manipulating testing data.

The ban meant the country would miss the Tokyo Olympics as well as football's 2022 World Cup in Qatar and the 2022 Winter Olympics in China.

This week's Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) hearing, which is expected to last until Friday, has already caused division.

"WADA had requested that the hearing be held in public but for that to happen all parties were required to be in agreement and that was not the case," said a WADA statement.

Instead, and in keeping with the "Cold War style" of the case, the hearing will take place behind closed doors and at a secret location.

A decision will only be made public on an undisclosed date. Russia considers its ban to be legally indefensible.

Former Russian prime minister Dmitry Medvedev described the suspension as "chronic anti-Russian hysteria."

It's being billed as a landmark week for Russian sport and global anti-doping efforts. WADA, formed in 1999, also has plenty on the line after the US threatened to pull its annual $2.7 million financing.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and sports federations are expecting clear directives from CAS, eight months out from the rescheduled Tokyo Olympics.

"WADA has left no stone unturned in preparation for this hearing and we are looking forward to having the opportunity to present our case clearly and fairly to the panel," said WADA President Witold Banka. "As at every other stage, we are following due process in relation to RUSADA's compliance procedure as we continue to deal effectively with this complex matter."

It is a saga which is now uncomfortably into its fifth year.

In May 2016, Grigory Rodchenkov, the former head of Moscow's anti-doping laboratory, blew the whistle over state-backed doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. Barely two weeks before the 2016 Olympics in July that year, WADA called for Russia to be banned from Rio.

The IOC, however, stopped short of an outright ban and said individual federations would decide whether to allow Russian athletes to compete.

In 2017, the IOC banned Russia from the 2018 Winter Games, but allowed clean Russian athletes to take part as neutral competitors. 

Then, in September 2018, WADA lifted its ban on RUSADA, despite not having been granted access to its doping-tainted Moscow laboratory. 

Russia handed over lab data to WADA in January, 2019. However, in yet another twist, in September WADA gave Russia three weeks to explain "inconsistencies" in the data. WADA then decided to ban Russia for four years over the manipulated data.