The Russian Anti-doping Agency (RUSADA) will have to prove it can operate “independently of Russia” if the Russian team is to participate in the Rio Olympics, according to Dick Pound, author of the damning World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) doping report. That decision puts the participation of Russian athletes in Rio into doubt but this is a scenario Bach is clearly keen to avoid.
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The WADA Independent Commission was set up and began its work earlier, following a series of German documentaries on the alleged mass use of performance enhancing drugs among Russia’s field and track athletes.
“They’ll have to find a new laboratory director that will satisfy the world anti-doping agency as to his or her… willingness to make sure that the laboratory acts independently and is not subject to any pressures regarding the non-disclosure of positive samples”, he said.
“I was very hopeful the IAAF would suspend them, it needed to happen”, Tallent said.
The ARAF has adopted an anti-crisis plan in the hopes of resuming its membership in the IAAF within three months, the ARAF’s acting president, Vadim Zelichenok, said Sunday, TASS reported. Russia’s athletics federation was pro…
The agreement urged the Russian side to take necessary measures in order to qualify Russian athletes for 2016 Olympic Games.
The IAAF has provisionally suspended the All-Russia Athletic Federation (ARAF) as an IAAF Member with immediate effect.
“I got bronze last time behind two Russians who have since been banned for doping”, Tallent said. “For me, this is pure speculation at this point”.
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 worldwide Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach dismissed as “speculation”. The WADA budget comes in at around $26 million a year, funded half by the global Olympic Committee and half by governments around the world.
After a three-hour teleconference on Friday, hosted by its president Sebastian Coe, the worldwide Association of Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) council voted 22-1 in favour of the sanction, with the Russian representative not able to vote.
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“I don’t think any country is on the grand scale Russian Federation is, but there are definitely other countries who need to be more closely investigated”.
