MOSCOW, Nov 26 — Russian sports officials today spoke out against a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) committee’s recommendations that the country be banned from the Olympics for four years, saying this was overly harsh and would hurt sport there.

Russia could miss out on the Tokyo Olympics next summer and world championships in a wide range of sports.

Wada’s independent Compliance Review Committee recommended the ban after Moscow provided Wada with laboratory data that was found to have been doctored.

"It’s sad. I can only call these recommendations unfair,” Umar Kremlev, head of Russia’s boxing federation, said in a statement.

"Russia plays an important role in the development of global sport. How can such a country be banned?”

The committee’s recommendations will be put to the agency’s executive committee at meetings in Paris on December 9.

For Dmitry Svishchev, president of Russia’s curling federation, the country has already sufficiently been punished for its doping scandals.

"These recommendations are harsh, baseless punishment for old problems for which Russia has already been punished,” he told Reuters.

"Russia has made great progress in fighting doping. To punish the next generation in such a harsh manner is too much.”

Russia was banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) from last year’s Pyeongchang Winter Games as punishment for alleged state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics. — AFP