Russia will ask the world athletics body to allow its athletes to compete in upcoming events under a different banner than the Russian flag to circumvent a ban on their athletics federation.
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The length of Russia’s exile depends on the country implementing adequate anti-doping measures, and can only be lifted by a new vote of the IAAF council whose next meeting is scheduled for Monaco on November 26-27.
The worldwide Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspended the Russian Athletics Federation (ARAF) on Friday following allegations of widespread and state-sponsored doping.
As it stands, no Russian athlete will be able to compete at the Olympic Games in Rio next year.
Isinbayeva’s coach, 71-year-old Yevgeny Trofimov, told the Russian press on Saturday that the four-time Olympian could ponder competing as an independent athlete under the Olympic flag, a prospect the global Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach dismissed as “speculation”.
Bach gave his backing to Russian Olympic Committee head Alexander Zhukov who has been appointed to oversee reforms of Russia’s athletics federation anti-doping agency and national drug test lab all of which were implicated in a damning report issued Monday by an independent World Anti-Doping Agency panel. “If you can not qualify, you can not participate in the Games”.
The eastern European powerhouse, fourth in the London 2012 Olympic medal table, was accused of running a “state supported” doping programme by a World Anti-Doping Agency commission report this week.
The IAAF on Sunday night responded to claims from a member of WADA’s independent commission about the possibility of it being banned from the Rio Olympics.
IAAF president Sebastian Coe has conceded there are “unlikely to be many tomorrows for athletics” and WADA commissioner Richard McLaren did not rule out a provisional suspension for the world governing body of track and field. If the Russian athletics federation is not compliant and the athletes can not take part in any kind of qualifications, then the situation is clear. “I appreciated very much the openness of the discussion and welcomed the fact that the Russian Olympic Committee will play the leading role”.
The IAAF has meanwhile named the five-person team appointed to monitor the Russian clean-up attempt.
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Reedie backed Lord Coe to confront what he admitted was the worst scandal he had seen in his decades in sports administration, amid intense scrutiny of the IAAF president over his ties to a regime that is under investigation for allegedly taking bribes to cover up doping.
