“There was an open and frank discussion” during meetings with Russian officials this week, Andersen said.
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Russian Federation remains indefinitely suspended from participating in athletics worldwide events after the country was found to be masterminding a doping ring.
Some of the doping levels recorded by Russian athletes were so startlingly high, IAAF officials were concerned for the athletes’ lives.
Athletes reacted with disgust at the new AP findings that IAAF blood tests as far back as 2009 were already providing shocking insight into the scale and gravity of Russian doping.
The IAAF outlined reinstatement and verification criteria to ARAF last month and a taskforce travelled to Russia this week for talks with the aim of ensuring plans are in place to clean up Russian athletics.
Russian athletes were subsequently banned indefinitely by the IAAF.
The AP was given the documents from a source involved in the workings of the IAAF’s anti-doping program for years. It added: “It is impossible to “discreetly” remove from competition for two years athletes who are multiple world and/or Olympic champions”.
The Independent Commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) published on November 9 the results of its probe into the activities of the ARAF, the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and the Russian Sports Ministry.
Yet it took the publication of the Wada report – based on the evidence of a 2014 German TV documentary – for the IAAF to rule that “the whole system has failed the athletes, not just in Russian Federation, but around the world”.
“WADA found out more than we could ever find ourselves”, he said in an interview. “Suspicion is not enough to suspend people”.
The IAAF, up until this time, had acted publicly unaware of the Russian doping scandal, which has led to a near wiping out of the country’s worldwide athletics program.
Lamine Diack, Lord Coe’s predecessor as president, is the subject of a police investigation over claims he took money to cover up positive tests by Russian athletes.
The IAAF told AP the letters were genuine.
Tests conducted at the 2009 world championships, where Russian Federation won 13 medals, “strongly suggest a systematic abuse of blood doping or EPO-related products”, Weiss added. The injectable hormone and blood transfusions, both banned in sports, are used by cheats to boost their levels of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, artificially improving performance.
A task force from the global track federation has concluded its initial visit to Russia as officials from that country seek to have their track athletes reinstated for the 2016 Summer Olympics.
A follow-up note four months later, marked “STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL”, proposed that the IAAF also violate its own rules by “exceptionally” allowing the sanctioned, lower-level athletes to keep their competition results. “Their withdrawal from competition wouldn’t necessarily attract attention”, it says.
The IAAF told the AP the proposals were never put into practice.
IAAF spokesman Chris Turner told AP: “No cases were concealed or suppressed – the IAAF simply tackled them in order of importance”.
“Every athlete was investigated and has either been sanctioned or is now going through a legal process as part of being sanctioned”, he said.
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– A September 28, 2012, internal brief for then-IAAF President Lamine Diack estimated 42 percent of tested Russian elite athletes doped. “This has been a shameful wake-up call”, Sebastian Coe, the British Olympian and newly elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, said.
