MOSCOW, September 24. /TASS/. President of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Sir Craig Reedie has supported the decision to reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) in an open letter published on the Around the Rings website.

On September 20, the WADA Executive Committee decided to reinstate the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) at a meeting in the Seychelles. RUSADA was reinstated on condition that WADA will be granted access to the Moscow laboratory, otherwise the Russian agency may once again be declared non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code.

"Heading into this summer, 29 of the 31 criteria of the compliance roadmap had already been achieved. The Russian agency had met the same standards expected of any other. Only the acknowledgement of wrongdoing and access to the Moscow laboratory remained, as they had since the roadmap was agreed by the Russians in January 2017," Reedie wrote. "WADA’s independent Compliance Review Committee met in June and developed further definitions for these two criteria. It was a clear effort to break a long deadlock, aimed primarily at securing the laboratory material we have long needed to show the culpability of suspected athletes. I proposed these two definitions to the Russian sports ministry and on September 13, a response finally arrived. It offered both an acknowledgement of wrongdoing and established a tight timeframe for access," the letter reads.

"The independent experts felt this sufficed. They proposed reinstatement, pending a critical deadline of 31 December for the access we require," Reedie went on to say. WADA’s Executive Committee agreed. We understand the skepticism over access to whatever the Moscow lab might still hold. But the deadline, and a further decision that failure to deliver would inevitably result in renewed non-compliance, places WADA in a uch stronger position than at any time in the past four years, especially since newer and stronger sanctions would apply," the WADA president pointed out.

He also said that "obtaining the data within a reasonable deadline is what is needed for many ongoing disciplinary procedures and so now that we have a commitment from Russia with a hard deadline, there is a real chance that at last it will happen."

"This week’s decision was based entirely on achieving Russian compliance, as properly delivered. A regularly monitored anti-doping process in Russia is surely the best way to reassure athletes there, and elsewhere, that clean sport prevails. The opportunity to finally resolve cases where we have suspicion, but not definitive proof, could not have been postponed," Reedie said. "Russia must now deliver on its formal undertakings. Clean athletes, governments and sport are watching closely, with WADA at the forefront," he concluded.