Russia Is Facing A Ban From the Tokyo Olympics Due to Some Missing Drugs Tests

Yes, Russia, where did that information go?:

The World Anti-Doping Agency has given Russia three weeks to explain how a number of positive drug tests were deleted from a database sent to the world’s anti-doping regulator as it investigated one of the biggest cheating scandals in sports history.

Any punishment would almost certainly include Russia’s ban from next year’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, but it could extend to competitions in any sport whose governing body is a signer of WADA’s doping code, including soccer’s World Cup, track and field’s world championships and dozens of other sporting events.

The chief executive of Russia’s anti-doping agency, world , declined over the weekend to rule out the possibility that the data sent to WADA from the Moscow lab at the centre of the 2015 doping scandal had been manipulated. In a text message Monday, Ganus said he was “frustrated” with that possibility, and said the potential consequences for all Russian sports “will be more than serious.”

“I think this situation is the most critical since this doping crisis began,” he said.

Russia’s promise to deliver a database of thousands of athlete records was a key factor in WADA’s decision to lift a ban on the country’s anti-doping agency in late 2018. That determination ended a three-year suspension that had been imposed after the discovery of one of the most audacious and sophisticated cheating schemes in history, one that corrupted a number of major international sporting events, including several Olympics.