Cheaters Gotta Cheat: Russian Doping Edition

Cheating in their own and in our elections are just a couple of things Russia cheats at. They famously cheat at sports. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has recommended that Russian athletes be banned for four years from international sporting events, following the discovery that positive drug tests were deleted from a Moscow lab's database. If those recommendations are approved by WADA's executive committee next month, the ban would result in Russian athletes being banned from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, among other major events:

"Wada’s compliance review committee has also recommended stripping Russia of sports events already awarded to the country 'unless it is legally or practically impossible to do so' and for Russian government officials to be barred from attending sporting events for the next four years. A ban for the same period on flying the Russian flag at major competitions would also apply." (our emphasis)

Ouch. If approved, the ban on Russian athletes would also extend to the next World Cup competition in Qatar in 2022. Of course, Russian doping of their athletes isn't a new phenomenon, it's in their < cough > DNA:

"Russia was banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang but was allowed by the International Olympic Committee to send a 168-strong team under the name Olympic Athlete from Russia. Those numbers were also restricted by the IOC, who vetted Russian athletes’ doping history and investigated whether they were implicated in any apparent cover-ups. [snip]

The news comes three years after a report by the Canadian law professor Richard McLaren concluded that more than 1,000 Russian athletes across more than 30 sports benefited from state-sponsored doping between 2012 and 2015.

McLaren said he had found 'a cover-up that operated on an unprecedented scale' and pointed the finger at the Russian ministry of sport, the Russian security services and the Russian anti-doping agency for creating what he called 'an institutional conspiracy across summer, winter and Paralympic sports.'” (our emphasis)

They apparently have never learned that they'll get caught if they dope their athletes, just like they got caught helping their asset Donald "Tovarich" Trump in 2016. The problem is, Russia hasn't been made to pay for the latter cheating scandal, and they left their dope in the Oval Office.

(photo: High -- very high -- jump champ Ivan Ukhov was previously banned)