IAAF president Sebastian Coe told reporters after a meeting of the IAAF Council on Friday that, “Although good progress has been made, the IAAF Council was unanimous that RusAF (Russian Athletics Federation) had not met the reinstatement conditions and that Russian athletes could not credibly return to global competition without undermining the confidence of their competitors and the public”.
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“We can not trust that what people might call clean athletes are really clean”.
As IAAF president Lord Coe repeatedly said, the final decision on Olympic eligibility is “a matter for the IOC”.
The IAAF said some Russian athletes could yet be given the chance to showcase their talents in Brazil, but only by competing as neutrals if they are able to prove that they are clean.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said that it was unfair to ban all Russian athletes from participating in Rio Games, adding that he hoped to find a solution to the problem.
Russian Federation has insisted it has reformed and made changes to fix its doping culture, but the IAAF apparently disagreed.
The IAAF agreed unanimously to uphold the ban at a meeting in Vienna, but will meet again next Tuesday in Lausanne to discuss the possibility of allowing a limited number of Russian athletes to compete in Rio.
The ruling came four days before a sports summit called by the International Olympic Committee to address “the hard decision between collective responsibility and individual justice”.
This formed the basis for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Independent Commission investigation which found evidence of a systemic and state-sponsored programme, leading directly to today’s decision to maintain a Russian ban subsequently imposed by the IAAF. Athletes will nearly assuredly appeal the decision. The IAAF upheld its ban on Russia¿s track and field team for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in a landmark decision that punishes the world power for systematic doping. “And your country has destroyed “clean athletes” dreams for decades”, Sharp retorted on Twitter. I’ll turn to a human rights court.
The IAAF did change its rules to make way for “any individual athletes who can clearly and convincingly show that they are not tainted” by doping and who have been outside Russian Federation and subject to effective drug-testing systems.
Those individuals can apply to a special IAAF committee for permission to compete as a “neutral athlete”, not for Russian Federation.
In December 2014 the German TV channel, ARD, aired a documentary film about how Russian track and field athletes systematically used banned substances at the urging of their coaches.
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The 800m runner and her husband Vitaliy were the whistleblowers who helped uncover just how rotten the Russian system had become when they first took their story to WADA and then to a German documentary-maker.
