Will Russian sportsmen and women be banned from taking part in next February’s Winter Olympics at Pyeongchang in South Korea? The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has said Russia is one of four countries that have failed to comply with its code. The International Olympic Committee will make the final decision on the presence of Russian athletes at the beginning of next month.

This is a saga that ought to be brought to an end. After a WADA report found what it said was evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping of Russian athletes at international competitions, there was considerable pressure, not least from the United States, for Moscow to be banned from last year’s Rio Olympics. In the end the IOC left it to the governing bodies of individual sports to decide on any ban. The result was that 278 Russians were allowed to take part while 111 were banned.

The Russian sports ministry insists that the country has fulfilled all its commitments to WADA. This WADA disputes. The anti-doping agency says it has been denied access to the laboratory that it maintains was at the hub of the long-standing doping operation. It is also demanding a public admission that senior sports ministry officials were at the very least involved in a cover-up following doping allegations during the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian resort of Sochi. The first demand is curious, since journalists have been taken to the laboratory in question, though obviously they did not have the expertise of anti-doping investigators.

The second demand is dubious because it is political in tone. The Russians have admitted that there was wrongdoing but denied any official involvement. If WADA is intent on doing its job properly, does it really need to insist that Russia confess to official connivance? Indeed, is it not possible that the Russians have refused to let the anti-doping body’s investigators look at the suspicious laboratory because they are concerned that the findings may be biased?

Doping threatens to destroy a whole range of sports from athletics, cycling, tennis and even snooker, where players were found taking beta-blockers to control their heart rates. The public wants to know that they are watching feats of excellence based on the talents, strength and training of athletes, not on the amount of drugs that have been pumped into them to improve their performance.

Russia, as indeed many of its former Eastern Bloc allies, was once intent on doing whatever it took to win medals and thus international acclaim. The cheating culture was clearly ingrained and not simply in Russia. Cycling is still grappling with a range of scandals among which were revelations that saw record seven-times Tour de France winner American Lance Armstrong stripped of all his honors.

WADA has an extremely important job to do. Without its vigilant oversight of the anti-doping authorities in every country, world sports could deteriorate into a free-for-all bear garden in which the values of sportsmanship and genuine competition would be trampled under foot. But it needs to steer clear of politics. Unfortunately, its latest report on Russia’s anti-doping measures strays beyond technical and supervisory complaints. Its demand that Moscow admit state-sponsored doping looks as if it is trying to get the Russians to eat crow.