“Although good progress has been made, the IAAF Council was unanimous that [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”, IAAF President Sebastian Coe said in a statement.
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The IOC had said it would wait for the IAAF ruling before addressing the issue of the Russian team’s eligibility.
“The Ministry is calling upon all members of the International Olympic Committee to once again assess the consequences the precedent (ban of the national team from the Olympic Games) will have both for Russian athletes and all of Russian people as well as for other memebrs of the Olympic movement”, an official statement says.
Sky’s sports correspondent Paul Kelso said the world governing body and the agency had to be able to carry out testing on Russian athletes without interference.
The IAAF Council, with 24 of the 27 members taking part, is meeting in Vienna to vote on whether to readmit Russia, first banned in November after a bombshell report by a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) independent commission that said there was state-sponsored doping and mass corruption in Russian athletics.
The ministry adds “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”.
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The final word may come from the International Olympic Committee, which has scheduled a summit of sports leaders next Tuesday to address “the hard decision between collective responsibility and individual justice”.
A total of 736 tests were declined or canceled as doping control officers have seen athletes avoid them or pull out of competition.
A German documentary aired this month suggested that Russian officials, including the sports minister, were involved in concealing positive doping tests of Russian athletes.
Russia’s track and field athletes are running out of time to clear their names. Throughout the scandal, the Kremlin has attacked the potential ban as a USA -backed plot, meant to punish Russian Federation and undermine its authorities. Though Russia denied those accusations, the country’s track and field authorities did not contest the suspension when given an opportunity in November.
“Clean athletes who have dedicated years of their lives to training and who never sought to gain unfair advantage through doping should not be punished for the past actions of other individuals”, Mutko wrote, according to The Washington Post.
Track and field’s world governing body is set to decide whether Russian athletes will be allowed to compete in the upcoming summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
On Wednesday, WADA released another damning report on the doping situation in Russian Federation, one of the world’s sporting super-powers, who were second behind the United States in the athletics medal table at the 2012 Olympics.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) claimed earlier this week that officials in Russian Federation were being stopped from testing athletes by security officials.
The Olympics begin August 5 in Rio de Janeiro.
And Mr Putin hit out at possibility that clean Russian athletes could miss the Olympics over their teammates’ use of performance-enhancing drugs.
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Before the decision, President Vladimir Putin had made one final attempt to convince the world that Russia’s isolation in athletics should end now.
