The IAAF has announced the rest of the five-person panel that will monitor Russia’s efforts to win reinstatement of its track and field federation.
Advertisement
Russia said on Sunday it would ask the world athletics body to allow its athletes to compete under an Olympic banner rather than the Russian flag to circumvent a ban, but the idea was quickly brushed aside by the worldwide Olympic Committee. “We are confident that the initiatives being proposed by the ROC, with the responsible global organisations, WADA and the IAAF, will ensure compliance as soon as possible in order to provide participation of the clean Russian athletes at the Olympic Games”.
Although the suspension is provisional, without a time limit and with immediate effect, eight months ahead of the 2016 Olympics questions remain whether a Russian athletics team will be on the road to Rio.
“We have to create structures that are always in their corner and here none of us come out very well, including my federation”.
“No not at all, I still enjoy the sport and the travel, and I’ve got a lot of friends who have bandied together and fought this doping problem for a while”, he said.
Secretary General of the Russian Athletics Federation Mikhail Butov, stated that moving forward, he intends to restore the Russian athletes’ reputation as well as put them back in the Rio Olympic games.
He also revealed the “firestorm” unleashed by an independent Wada investigation that found Russian Federation guilty of a state-sponsored doping programme which sabotaged the London 2012 Olympics was set to have far-reaching consequences for the anti-doping movement.
Russian Federation has been stripped of hosting rights for next year’s IAAF World Race Walking Cup, and Athletics Australia has confirmed their interest in bidding.
The move, which comes after last week’s revelations by the World Anti-Doping Agency, was passed nearly unanimously in a vote of IAAF Council members last night.
“The corruption in Russian Athletics deserves no less”.
IAAF president Lord Coe has admitted he should have seen the warning signs before athletics became engulfed in a doping crisis.
“We’ve discussed the IAAF decision and worked out a crisis plan”, Vadim Zelichenok told the R-Sport news agency after an extraordinary ARAF meeting.
Advertisement
Former IAAF president Lamine Diack is being probed by the French authorities after the 82-year-old Senegalese was alleged to have received more than one million euros ($1.07 million) in bribes in 2011 to cover up positive doping tests of Russian athletes.
