He told the BBC: “Tonight our sport finds itself in a shameful situation”.
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A member of a youth national team Ivan Filippov attends a training session at the “Yunost” s …
In an effort to avoid a ban from track and field, Russian Federation offered “broad cooperation” on doping reforms on Friday, including the creation of a new anti-doping agency.
“It is our duty to protect the clean athletes”, the Ukrainian pole vault great said, drawing a parallel with his own experience of being prevented from competing at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles because of a Soviet boycott.
“It’s important that a strong message be sent as a deterrent to any country involved in “state sponsored’ doping and the penalty should be more that a short-term slap on the wrist”. Among the report’s recommendations was a suspension of the country’s track program for the Rio Olympics unless it demonstrated a significant improvement to its anti-doping program.
Coe’s bullish response comes at the end of a week in which his previous role as IAAF vice-president under the now-suspended Lamine Diack had been called into question. “Our verification team will be tough and will make sure if there is an introduction for those athletes, that changes have been made”.
“But we don’t want to scrub Russian athletics off the world map and we will not accept such a decision”.
On Friday, Sputnik quoted Minister of Sport Vitaly Mutko as acknowledging a few doping problems in Russia, but saying that all Russian athletes shouldn’t be penalized. Many remained upbeat about their chances of competing in the Olympics while questioning why other countries were not being investigated alongside Russian Federation.
If Russian Federation challenges the decision, IAAF could proceed to “a full hearing on whether the provisional suspension should be made a full suspension”.
This means that the world junior championships and the world race walking tournament slated to be held in Russian Federation next year will be moved to another location or may be cancelled altogether, the IAAF statement said.
After the report was published, the anti-doping agency recommended the IAAF ban Russian track-and-field athletes from worldwide competition and stripped Russia’s anti-doping lab of its accreditation.
Mutko did not rule out that Russia could take measures to address the allegations ahead of a meeting of the council of the global Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF). He could not give an indication of how long the ban could be, saying “the period is unfortunately not prescribed and therefore will depend on how convincing we are with our case and how objective the comission is”.
“We’ll work with them, ” he told reporters in Moscow. The findings will go to the WADA foundation board, which will vote on it next Wednesday in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
WADA has already suspended the anti-doping laboratory in Moscow.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks at a meeting on military issues in the Bocharov Ruchei residence outside the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia, Thursday, November 12, 2015.
