Reuters Videos
WADA disappointed at Russia’s new Olympics uniform
The World Anti-Doping Agency, WADA, will be forced to watch as Russian athletes wear their country’s colours at the Tokyo Olympics, after receiving softened sanctions over the nation’s doping scandals.WADA had originally banned Russia from the world’s top sporting events for four years in December 2019.But the sanctions were halved late last year by the Court of Arbitration for Sport or CAS, in a clear victory for Russia.While the Russians are still not allowed to compete under their own flag, name, or anthem, they can wear red white and blue uniforms despite WADA requesting they wear neutral colors – as they did at the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games.Olivier Niggli is the WADA Director General:We never asked, and I have to be very clear, we never asked for the Russian athletes not to be allowed to come to the games. What we don’t want is the athletes who were involved in the scandal to be here, and we didn’t want the flags and so on. We asked for neutral colours – that was our request, CAS decided that they could have the colours, not the flag.”The new uniforms feature the logo of the Russian Olympic Committee and the letters ‘ROC’ on them.They’re almost indistinguishable from past Russian uniforms.Many Russian athletes were sidelined from the past two Olympics as punishment for state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Games.Russia has acknowledged shortcomings in its implementation of anti-doping policies, but it denies running a state-sponsored doping programme.