Olympics: Russia promises reform as Moscow lab threatened with suspension

Russia’s sports minister Vitali Mutko on Monday promised that necessary reforms will be made at a Moscow laboratory threatened with suspension by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) just months before the Winter Olympics.

WADA has provisionally suspended the accreditation of the laboratory in the Russian capital of the right to test athletes because of questions over the quality of their procedures.

Mutko insisted the reforms would be made at the lab which has until December 1 to improve the reliability of their results.

“We have received an official letter from WADA with its recommendations. One of them requires that at least three international experts be engaged,” said Mutko.

“These recommendations will obviously be applied ... there is no problem,” said the Russian minister quoted by Ria Novosti news agency.

“WADA systematically makes objections and proposals to doping centres to improve laboratory efficiency,” he added.

The Moscow lab has a first deadline of December 1 to bring in independent “quality management” experts to “allow everyone to be confident of the accuracy and reliability of results moving forward,” WADA said in a statement.

WADA has also imposed a second deadline of April 1, 2014, when the lab must ensure that programme of improvement has been “drafted, finalized, implemented and embedded.”  “If the two above-mentioned conditions are fully satisfied within the specified deadlines (to which no extensions will be granted), then the above referenced six month suspension of accreditation of the Moscow laboratory shall never come into effect,” the WADA statement said.

Meanwhile, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said they are confident the Russian doping lab can carry out tests during the Sochi Games from February 7-23 despite being threatened with suspension.

“The IOC has confidence that all the necessary measures will be taken and that the laboratory in Sochi will function perfectly during the Games,” the IOC said in a statement.

“The integrity of the testing programme during the Games will not be affected by these decisions, but will in fact be strengthened.”  If Moscow loses its accreditation, it would not be able to test athletes’ urine and blood samples for banned substances at the Sochi Olympics.

That would follow WADA’s revocation of the Rio de Janeiro laboratory’s rights to test in August, which will force organisers to fly samples to Switzerland during the football World Cup in Brazil.

Rio is also host city for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which means the host cities of both upcoming Games will potentially have lost testing accreditation — an embarrassment for the organising countries.