WADA steps up monitoring of Russian athletes on the road to Los Angeles 2028
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has announced stricter and more independent monitoring of Russian athletes returning to international competition who could qualify for the Olympic Games in Los Angeles in 2028. The plan includes multiple tests before their return to the biggest stage, with the number and schedule of controls depending on the assessment of the doping risk in each individual sport. A key part of the system will be removing direct control from the hands of the Russian anti-doping system: the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has stipulated that the programme covering risk assessment, the test distribution plan and results management must be delegated to the International Testing Agency (ITA). This is an attempt to address the long-standing distrust surrounding Russian sport since the discovery of systematic doping and sample manipulation linked to the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi.
WADA Director General Olivier Niggli told AFP at the agency's headquarters in Montreal that the organisation "is not naive" and will remain particularly vigilant because athletes from other countries expect a guarantee that the system will be credible and equal for everyone. According to him, Russian athletes approaching Olympic qualification should be tested multiple times, and the samples will not be analysed in Russia. Niggli also stressed that the circumstances that enabled manipulation during the Sochi period are not the same today, precisely because samples must leave the country for analysis. For WADA, this is one of the most important mechanisms for reducing the risk of national control over the entire chain of sample collection and analysis.
The IOC has opened the way for a return, but under a special anti-doping regime
The new framework follows the decision of the IOC Executive Board of 7 July 2026, which provisionally lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and withdrew earlier recommendations that had restricted the participation of Russian athletes and teams. The IOC explained that the Russian Olympic Committee no longer has among its members regional sports organisations from territories that, under the Olympic system, fall within the jurisdiction of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, which had been the reason for the suspension imposed in October 2023. The decision does not automatically mean Russia's full return in every sport, because international federations continue to retain their own rules, sanctions and qualification conditions. The IOC has also not yet made a final decision on the possible use of the Russian flag, anthem, colours and other national symbols at the Games in Los Angeles. At the same time, however, it has clearly established anti-doping conditions for every Russian athlete returning to international competition.
According to the IOC's official decision, athletes re-entering international competitions must be covered by a national anti-doping programme that is operationally delegated to the ITA. Before returning, they must undergo multiple tests, while the intensity of controls will be determined according to a sport-specific risk assessment. International federations must agree with the ITA on how many tests are required and over what period, while taking into account qualification cycles for Los Angeles 2028 that have already begun. If RUSADA remains non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code immediately before the 2028 Games, the IOC has announced that it will entrust the ITA with ensuring independent testing of all qualified Russian athletes.
RUSADA remains non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code
The status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency remains the central issue of the entire model. On its official list, WADA continues to classify RUSADA as a signatory that is non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code. The legal consequences arising from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) decision of December 2020 expired in December 2022, but the end of those special sanctions did not automatically mean the restoration of full compliance status. For RUSADA to be reinstated as a compliant organisation, WADA must determine that all established conditions have been fulfilled, and oversight of governance, independence and the actual functioning of the national programme plays an important role in that process. WADA President Witold Banka told AFP that such an assessment requires a physical audit in Moscow, but that it has not been possible to carry it out because of the political situation and the war in Ukraine.
In the same interview, Banka stressed that under the current circumstances the return of Russia's national laboratory to the system of WADA-accredited laboratories cannot be considered either. The Moscow laboratory had its accreditation revoked in April 2016, after WADA had previously suspended it in November 2015 because of findings of serious irregularities. Since Russia has no accredited laboratory, samples from athletes subject to the international system are sent to other countries for analysis. Such an arrangement reduces the possibility that a single national structure simultaneously controls sample collection, laboratory processing and the handling of results.
The legacy of Sochi continues to determine the level of distrust
Today's caution is difficult to understand without the events that followed the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi. WADA's Independent Commission, led by Richard Pound, published findings in 2015 on widespread doping in Russian athletics, while a subsequent investigation by Professor Richard McLaren described a system for manipulating anti-doping procedures that involved numerous sports and state structures. One of the most serious findings concerned sample swapping and the concealment of positive results within the laboratory system, which left the credibility of data from Moscow in question for years. WADA later also obtained data from the Moscow laboratory's information system, and analyses of those data led to a series of proceedings against athletes even after the original events were several years old.
Because of the manipulation of laboratory data, WADA reopened proceedings against RUSADA in 2019, and at the end of 2020 CAS imposed a two-year package of consequences that affected Russian national symbols and participation in major competitions. Russian athletes then competed at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, held in 2021, and at the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing without the full use of national symbols. In parallel with the anti-doping case, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 opened a separate set of sporting sanctions and restrictions. Distinguishing between these two grounds remains important today: easing political or Olympic restrictions does not mean that anti-doping compliance issues have simultaneously disappeared, just as resolving individual anti-doping conditions does not automatically remove sanctions applied by international federations because of the war.
The return will not be the same in every sport
The IOC's July decision therefore does not guarantee that Russian athletes will have the same path to Los Angeles in every discipline. International federations continue to have considerable autonomy in setting participation conditions, and some sports have retained stricter restrictions. World Athletics, for example, reaffirmed on 3 July 2026 the decision from 2022 under which Russian and Belarusian athletes, officials and support personnel are excluded from international athletics competitions because of the war in Ukraine. This is separate from the former suspension of the Russian Athletics Federation over institutional doping violations, which was lifted in 2023 after seven years. In other words, athletics illustrates how complex the return process can be: an anti-doping federation suspension can be resolved while a separate political sanction remains in force.
Similarly, qualification systems in other sports may include additional anti-doping criteria, an obligation to remain for an extended period in registered testing pools, or special rules concerning availability for out-of-competition controls. In Olympic weightlifting, for example, the qualification rules for Los Angeles 2028 require athletes to remain continuously available for testing throughout the qualification period and to properly submit whereabouts information when requested. A combination of Olympic, federation and anti-doping criteria must be met, while for Russian candidates an additional layer is provided by the independent oversight established by the IOC and WADA specifically because of the history of the national system.
ITA takes on a central operational role
The International Testing Agency was established to separate anti-doping operations as much as possible from sporting and national interests, and in recent years it has taken on an increasingly important role in the Olympic system. Since 2019, the IOC has delegated to it the organisation and management of doping controls at the Olympic Games. Ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games, the ITA ran an extensive pre-Games programme based on targeted recommendations, risk assessment and information sharing with international federations and national anti-doping organisations. At the beginning of February 2026, the IOC announced that around 7,100 tests had been conducted on more than 2,900 athletes in the six months before those Games and that 92 percent of participants had been tested at least once. All Individual Neutral Athletes were also tested before the Games in accordance with ITA recommendations.
That model provides a good indication of what can also be expected in preparations for Los Angeles. In 2025, the ITA renewed and expanded its cooperation agreement with the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA), with an emphasis on coordinating testing, exchanging information and operational preparations for LA28. WADA, according to Banka, has a good relationship with the LA28 organising committee and wants anti-doping decisions to be kept separate from political conflicts.
Multiple tests should begin well before the Games
The most important practical element of the new regime is the fact that testing should not be concentrated only in the days immediately before an Olympic appearance. The IOC explicitly requires returning athletes to be tested multiple times before re-entering international competition, with the timeframe to be determined by international federations in cooperation with the ITA. This is intended to avoid a situation in which an athlete spends an extended period outside the international system with insufficient controls and then appears immediately before a qualifying competition having formally met only the minimum requirements. Risk assessment may include the specifics of the discipline, the history of doping violations in a particular sport, training and competition periods, and the athlete's availability for unannounced controls. The final number of tests will therefore not necessarily be the same for all Russian Olympic candidates.
Such an approach is also important because of the limitations of the laboratory system within Russia. Every sample that must be analysed in an accredited laboratory outside the country creates additional logistical requirements, but at the same time also an additional level of independence. WADA does not claim that the mere fact of Russian nationality creates suspicion about an individual athlete; the emphasis is on a verification system that must be robust enough to remove doubts about the process. Niggli said that WADA currently has no concrete evidence that would in itself represent a new "red alert", but at the same time believes it would be irresponsible to ignore what happened in the past. Stricter monitoring is therefore presented as a preventive measure to protect the credibility of qualification, rather than as a predetermined judgement about athletes who are only trying to earn a place at the Games.
Los Angeles 2028 will be a test of trust, not just of return
Almost two years remain until the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, and qualification processes in a number of sports have already begun or are rapidly opening. This means that the real impact of the new rules will be visible well before the opening ceremony on 14 July 2028. The key question will be whether international federations, the ITA, WADA and national anti-doping organisations can build a sufficiently connected testing network so that every potential participant has a clear and verifiable history of controls. For Russian athletes, that threshold will be particularly important because their return is taking place under circumstances in which RUSADA still does not have the status of a compliant organisation and the country has no WADA-accredited laboratory. Any failure of independence or transparency could reopen questions that international sport has been trying to close for more than a decade.
At the same time, the new regime also shows the direction in which the global anti-doping system is developing. Banka said that WADA generally wants stronger rules under which testing at the biggest competitions would increasingly be carried out by independent bodies, without the direct participation of the national anti-doping organisation of the country whose athletes are being tested. The Russian case is therefore both special and a broader precedent: special because of Sochi, manipulated laboratory data and RUSADA's long-standing non-compliance, and broader because it could accelerate the transition towards a model in which operational independence is more important than national jurisdiction. For Los Angeles 2028, the greatest challenge will not only be to determine who is allowed to compete, but to ensure that athletes from all countries have reason to believe that their rivals have passed through a comparable, credible and professionally managed system of control.
Sources:
- AFP / Dawn - statements by Olivier Niggli and Witold Banka on enhanced monitoring of Russian athletes, laboratory analysis of samples outside Russia and the status of RUSADA (link)
- International Olympic Committee - decision of 7 July 2026 on the provisional lifting of the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee and special anti-doping conditions for the return of athletes (link)
- WADA - global list of signatories non-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Code, including RUSADA (link)
- WADA - documentation on the status of the Moscow laboratory and the revocation of its accreditation (link)
- International Olympic Committee - data on the ITA's independent testing programme ahead of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games (link)
- International Testing Agency - ITA and USADA cooperation agreement and preparations for Los Angeles 2028 (link)
- World Athletics - decision of 3 July 2026 on the continued exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from international athletics (link)