4 years.

That's really a shock, and that means Russia will be banned from Olympic 2020 World Cup 2022, it happen yet again after the ban in 2018... And we thought they have learned :(

"After being banned from the 2018 Games, the country and its Russian Anti-Doping Agency were conditionally reinstated in September 2018, but Russian officials were caught earlier this year manipulating data from its Moscow anti-doping laboratory and misleading WADA investigators, prompting a new chapter in a doping scheme that continues to roil the international sports community"

Terrible. Russian athletes can still play under netural flag though.

And, they still can play in European Champ as WADA considers that's not world scale.

Bad news for Russia but at least, they get to play the Euro 2020 which they had already qualified for. Would have been a punch in the gut if they couldn't even do that. Really suck about the Olympic and the World Cup. The supporter will be gutted and are the one punished the most I fear. :(

Lol, the clowns, I’m sure they can actually do well in lots of sports even without doping..

Politics at play here.

Not a huge surprise. They got off very lightly at the 2018 Olympics, and apparently instead of cooperating did everything they could to hide and continue their doping projects. A harsher punishment was inevitable, although they fact that athletes are still allowed to compete is a bit surprising.

@SunFlash Because all those US freak athletes are clean af. Burst out of your bubble for once and imagine how much money would sport brands like Nike etc. lose without the US athletes. Those companies run everything in sports.

@Greatone Calling an entire nation of athletes clowns makes you look silly. If you ever been in such sports coaches and other people manipulate young people and force their early success by taking risks.

@Emobot7 I would be happy if I would not be part of Qatar WC. Its a disgrace to the human race. Olympics tho...yes that is a big hit, although I am pretty sure Russia is not the only one just the unlucky ''guy'' who got caught.

Politics has nothing to do in sports... And responsibility is individual a d not collective. Banning clean athletes is a disgrace.

I would be happy if I would not be part of Qatar WC. Its a disgrace to the human race.

Fair point, but I'm sure that most player, even if they are against what is done for that WC, would rather play if possible. Suck to say but its hard to resist the prestige of the WC. :S

@tiki Thats a good point but how to be sure who is and who isn't? Especially when their governement protect them and make it harder to spot those that are. Russia shooting themselve in the foot if you want my opinion by protecting their athlete instead of trying to find those that are guilty.

In Soviet Russia Dope take you.

@jozev2

@Greatone Calling an entire nation of athletes clowns makes you look silly. If you ever been in such sports coaches and other people manipulate young people and force their early success by taking risks.

imagine thinking that I was referring to the whole country. Obviously if you even read the initial quote by tuan_jinn, you will realise that im referring to the officials as those are the ones who fucked Russia and its athletes

Russian officials were caught earlier this year manipulating data from its Moscow anti-doping laboratory and misleading WADA investigators

please. try not to make yourself look silly. (ironic isn't it) In reality I actually have been in such environments and am fully aware of how corruption works in sports, especially football.
And don't call it "force their early success by taking risks." they took stuff that gives them an unfair advantage, simple.

and to top it off. Just because US athletes are beasts doesn't mean they are doping lol. they have much stricter regulations for their athletes, but most importantly they have more money in their sports. (its not to say doping for them is at 0%) Money and investments in sports directly correlates to higher successes.

@tikitaka responsibility in this case is collective as it is the officials who are fucking around with the data. That's why they still allow the clean athletes to compete. The officials are representatives of Russia and so it still makes some sense to put in place a ban that disrupts russia, otherwise how else would they punish them where it actually matters? a crappy little fine would do nothing to discourage teams and athletes from gaining unfair advantages

Bs, do you know what 4 years mean In an athlete career ? That's half of a career, for someone who prepares his entire life for these events. Its plain injustice. Why would USA not banned from sports then ? The number of returned gold medals due to cheating is the most in the world. It's about politics and some clean champions will be stopped from competing without any reason.

You just dont go to jail if your neighbor commit murder, I will never agree on collective responsibility we aren't talking about a team, most of them are individual sports....

This is inherited from Soviet era mentality... meaning that all Eastern countries had to impress the West with their show in gymnastics and other sports, like East Germany for example. Turned out that the whole Eastern German was full on dopes in 1980 and before even. In Russia, they still do pretty much the same thing. I find it a little bit harsh, and I find a bit a little bit politically orientated, since there was proof that other countries were faking doping results. And following that precedent, we could ban the US Gymastics team because they had a doctor that raped like 120 athletes...

I don't want to argue with anyone. There is no doubt Russia has been doping.

Here are some other sports:

Athletics - Full of doping. Everyone except Bolt has been caught. US and Jamaica.

Cycling - Armstrong (US) Team Sky 2019 (UK)

Swimming - Su Wang (China)

Weightlifting - Lol.

UFC - Lol.

Boxing - Sadface lol.

I guess it is a matter of the scale of it. It shouldn't matter.

Sucks to be Russian i guess,
the problem is that the doping is state sponsored directly from the kremlin and Putins inferiority complex, where as in less corrupt countries. the athletes have cheated themselves

Kinda of sad, Russia really has some of the worst human rights in world, high suicide, economic issues , Football is a sweet escape from the worlds problems. I dont think anyone here can blame the players unless we have lived in their shoes, hell if Putin told me to stick some steroids in my butt cheeck i would probably abide out of fear
Let the clean athletes play if they can prove it IMO

Ivan Drago !

I think some of you are missing the point, they are punishing RUSSIA - not the sportsmen. It is Russia as a country that suffers from its officials cheating and the sportsmen who are caught cheating suffer. Russia pays by having no representation and a massive asterisk against their achievements.
Stop acting like they are punishing the players. The players who are clean will keep representing Russia even if it doesn’t say Russia on their shirt and those players will get the opportunity to compete whilst they are still at their peaks.

US athletes do break WADA regulations frequently and are banned for it as individuals with great regularity. The main difference in this case is that American athletes do it of their own accord, there is no national program in place designed to give them chemical advantages as in Russia. Many Russian athletes did not even know it was happening, and the first leak to WADA out of Russia came from a Russian athlete that realized he was being given illegal substances without his consent.

Therefore, instead of punishing individual athletes, WADA punishes the country responsible. This seems pretty judicially correct to me, and I fail to see how whataboutism or politics factors into this. It's the definition of an open and shut case, and that WADA spent so much time on it makes that all the more clear. You can't just ban a country without significant documentation of wrongdoing.

You can't just ban a country without significant documentation of wrongdoing.

in the world im living it, its always the case. I dont know if we are talking about the same one. ( ask Colin Powel.... )

The really funny thing about all the Russia fanboys or anti USA critiques crying politics, is that WADA recently tried to give Russia a second chance after their previous doping scandals. They let them reinstate RUSADA (the Russian anti doping organisation) in an attempt to get them to fix up their system. What Russia did was to just ignore WADA and continue their systematic doping like usual.

OK think about it from this perspective.

What if I told you guys that Nike, Oakley, Trek ALL knew about Lance Armstrongs U.S Postal/Discovery doping system. They knew about it and tried to continue selling products as he was a succesful cyclist 7-time winner of the TDF.

That is the main difference between Captialism (Commerce) and Communism (State shit). Yes, Russia is not Commie now but is still run by men of the former KGB and stuff like that.

Both trying to make themselves look good.

ledley, two things, two wrongs most definitely do not make a right and we are definitely talking about the Russia federation's misdemeanors. seconly, we all (should) know about the amount of doping corruption that is rife throughout ALL countries including the US and especially in football, its all about the money. sportsmen are being charged all the time, this was a the russian federation that has done the misdeed and its is them that are getting punished. Nike and corporations aren't responsible for anything but to make money. never get mislead by their marketing campaigns that try to make you believe they care, they only care when it will make them money.