Pound says 'not end of world' Russia missed lab testing deadline

Former WADA president Dick Pound is against imposing fresh sanctions on Russia for missing a deadline to allow World Anti-Doping Agency experts access to its Moscow laboratory.

"It's not the end of the world," former WADA president told AFP on Friday.

Experts began copying data at Russia'a tainted testing centre on Thursday, at the second attempt after a failed first visit in December.

Moscow subsequently missed the December 31 deadline to give WADA full access to the lab data vital to implicate or clear athletes in doping cases.

WADA's critics led by US anti-doping chief Travis Tygart have called for Russia to be punished anew, but Pound disagreed.

"The real objective in all of this was to get access to the lab and the data, and if it's a few days late it's not the end of the world.

"I think it's more important to concentrate on the information and test it to make sure that it's complete and it's not been altered and then to see if there are cases of anti-doping that need to be followed up by disciplinary process."
The 76-year-old Canadian lawyer stressed: "The strategic objective was to have access to the laboratory and the data and that's really what we want, and it looks like we now have that."
"We were stuck before, they were not moving, we were not moving," he explained. "So the decision in September was here's a way to make progress."