Earlier on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin denied accusations that top officials covered up positive doping tests.
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Russia claimed the IAAF’s decision to continue its ban of Russian athletics on Friday was unfair and threatened legal action, while the rest of the world welcomed the move and urged the International Olympic Committee not to go against it.
“The crack in the door is quite narrow and there won’t be many who manage to get through that crack in the door”, said Rune Andersen, the Norwegian anti-doping expert who headed the IAAF task force that determined that Russia’s reforms were not enough.
In those terms the timing of the confirmation that a ban on Russian athletes competing under the banner of their national federation has been upheld may have been close to unavoidable but it could not have been worse.
The ministry added, “We now appeal to the members of the International Olympic Committee to not only consider the impact that our athletes’ exclusion will have on their dreams and the people of Russian Federation, but also that the Olympics themselves will be diminished by their absence”. However both now, in the way Coe refused to answer Panorama presenter Mark Daly’s questions and historically, in the knowledge that there was, for example, no Eastern European among the Canadian, American and British runners who contested the 1988 Olympic 100 metres final that has been dubbed “the dirtiest race in history”, there is a real sense that people reared in the cold war era are finding it all too easy to pin blame on those dastardly Russians in bidding to deflect from wider problems. Rather surprisingly, there could yet be a select few Russian athletes allowed to compete at the Olympics under an unspecified “neutral flag”.
The IAAF rejected a last-minute plea by Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, who claimed the country had cleaned up its anti-doping system and met all the requirements for readmission.
A devastating Wada report released this week could not have been more damning of Russia’s anti-doping efforts, with details of a seemingly relentless quest by their athletes and government agencies to obstruct and deceive drug-testers.
The IOC merely “took note” of the decision but said it would discuss the situation in a telephone conference on Saturday.
Its decision could be a defining moment in the fight against drug abuse in sport.
“We firmly believe that clean athletes should not be punished for the actions of others”, he said in an open letter to Coe.
“My biggest hope with this decision is that the younger generation of athletes in Russian Federation, that has access to all the same information that we do in terms of news and facts, can make the conscious decision not to dope and that young generation will lead a charge of clean athletes in Russian Federation”, he wrote.
President Vladimir Putin condemned the decision as “unfair”, telling a meeting of leaders of major worldwide news agencies in St. Petersburg that athletes who compete without doping “shouldn’t suffer”.
A Kremlin spokesman, speaking hours before the ban was extended, said: “Everything possible needed to defend the rights of our athletes and the Olympic team is being done and will be done at a legal level”. Double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva has already confirmed she will bid to show the IAAF’s ruling is in “violation of human rights”.
“It is not a basic human right to take part in sport on the Olympic stage”, Radcliffe said.
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So can the International Olympic Committee overturn the IAAF’s decision?
