This follows the International Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) decision last week to continue its suspension of ARAF and prevent any Russian athlete from competing at the Olympic Games unless they can prove they have been operating in an effective testing system overseas.
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The International Olympic Committee on Saturday threw its support behind the decision to ban Russia’s track and field team from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics and said it will take “further far-reaching measures” to crack down on doping ahead of the games.
IAAF president Sebastian Coe does not believe there are many Russian athletes who will benefit from a loophole to compete in the Rio Olympics.
The TASS news agency quoted a spokesperson for Russia’s athletics federation as saying the IAAF Council had decided not to lift Russia’s suspension.
She finally broke through in Townsville last month – and said she was relieved that her hard work to qualify would not be cheapened by having to compete against athletes who trained under Russia’s state-sponsored doping programmes. Coates said an International Olympic Committee meeting this week would discuss the athletics ban but said he would be surprised if it overturned the IAAF decision.
“I view this decision as a violation of Russia’s rights and a violation of our interests in sports”.
President Vladimir Putin denied that Russian authorities had ever colluded in doping.
While some Russian athletes may be clean of banned substances, the decision to impose collective punishment was made necessary by the strong probability of Russian cheating at this year’s Games.
Friday’s unanimous decision was the IAAF’s clearest statement against doping for years and a personal triumph for its president Lord Coe, but questions still surround his own history of fighting drugs cheats.
An IOC Olympic summit in Lausanne is scheduled to discuss the issue.
The IOC said it “fully respects” the track federation’s ruling and “welcomes and supports” the ban as another measure to crack down on doping. Russian athletes won a total of 397 medals at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
An investigation funded by the World Anti-Doping Agency into allegations made by the former director of Moscow’s anti-doping lab Grigory Rodchenkov is now being led by Canadian legal expert Richard McLaren.
The IOC statement on Saturday added: “The eligibility of athletes in any global competition including the Olympic Games is a matter for the respective worldwide federation”.
That was exactly what IAAF president Sebastian Coe said on Friday after the IAAF council voted unanimously to retain the ban on Russian Federation competing in any athletics events.
Andersen continued on to say that one, two or 100 negative tests do not mean that an athlete is clean. To make matters worse for Russia, an independent investigator appointed by WADA said that the Russian government covered up positive drug tests at the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow.
“I don’t open emails, my office deals with those and deals with them promptly”.
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Officials also found themselves on the defensive when it emerged that a prominent extreme rightist, Alexander Shprygin, who has been photographed raising his hand in a Nazi salute, led a formal Russian fan club, the Union of Supporters, to France.
