Russia pessimistic over WADA reinstatement

MOSCOW: Russia's sports minister on Monday said it would be "difficult" for the country's anti-doping body to convince the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to reinstate it at a meeting in Seoul this week.
The explosive 2016 McLaren report commissioned by WADA alleged state-sponsored doping in Russia and saw the country shut out of the agency.
"We are setting out to Seoul today to try to convince members of the supervisory board to declare Russia's Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) compliant with the WADA code," minister Pavel Kolobkov told R-Sport agency.
"But it is difficult as they have demanded the unconditional recognition of the McLaren report that we cannot accept as it contains too many discrepancies."
Earlier this year, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko said Moscow partially accepted the findings of the report, but insisted the country had no state-sponsored doping programme.
The investigation said the cheating peaked at the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where Russian secret agents engineered an elaborate system of state-backed doping.
Russia's anti-doping body RUSADA was declared "non-compliant" while the country's track and field team was banned from the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics.
But WADA partially lifted RUSADA's ban, giving the agency the right to collect samples for doping tests. — AFP