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Russian Federation Denies Doping Results, Launches Investigation

“We are absolutely open and ready as a result of consultations with WADA to appoint even a foreign specialist to lead the laboratory if it is necessary”, minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport news agency.

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The Russian Anti-Doping Agency is due to prepare and send to WADA a report explaining reasons for the violations highlighted in the commission report before November 17.

Interpol has also agreed to launch its own investigation, and certain portions of the report have been held back pending the conclusion of their investigation, after which the full findings will be released.

“If Russian Federation is not in Rio, I think the reputation of athletics will be enhanced because the public will know every athlete competing is clean and is competing in the true spirit of the Olympic Games”, the 2016 Australian Olympic team’s chef de mission Kitty Chiller said.

Coolsaet, who runs between 220 km and 240 km over particularly rigorous training weeks, is less concerned about marathon runners, saying that he doesn’t suspect Russians who finished ahead of him in London of doping.

He said: “I won’t fail, but I also accept that this is a huge journey”.

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the meeting was canceled because heavy rain restricted fights in and out of Sochi.

He also said he had never heard of a secret Moscow laboratory – at the centre of the scandal – which allegedly hid doping by intentionally destroying more than 1,400 samples shortly before a WADA inspection.

An IOC statement said: “The IOC’s executive board decided this afternoon to confirm the proposal of the IOC ethics commission to provisionally suspend Mr. Lamine Diack, the former president of IAAF, from his honorary membership of the IOC”.

Three athletes who advanced, including one Russian, have since been banned for doping.

The WADA report, which this week rocked athletics, has accused Russian Federation of running a “state-supported” doping programme and has proposed lifetime bans for five middle-distance runners.

Diack, who stepped down as president of the IAAF in August, last week was placed under formal investigation by French authorities on suspicion of graft and money laundering.

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Former Olympic champion Lord Coe was elected president of the IAAF earlier this year, but he has faced mounting calls to explain how much he knew about doping and corruption. Fears were growing, meanwhile, that the Russian athletics scandal could widen to include other countries and other sports, as WADA suggested in its report.

Russian athletes could lose Olympic medals in aftermath of doping report