Mutko has spoken half a dozen times with the IAAF head, Sebastian Coe, and the Wada president, Craig Reedie, since the scandal broke, he said.
Advertisement
“We are observing an attempt to introduce the principle of collective punishment in sports, which we believe is absolutely inadmissible”, Zakharova said, adding that only Russian athletes have come in for criticism, although the problem of doping in sports is global.
Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko told Russia’s R-Sport agency: “We are prepared to re-certify the laboratory, or to reform, or to create a new anti-doping organisation”.
Coe was asked whether the Russian federation would be able to reform in time for its athletes to compete at the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, which run from August 5-21.
WADA confirmed it had provisionally suspended the Moscow laboratory at the centre of the controversy and initiated the process which will assess the compliance of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency.
A World Anti-Doping Agency committee found Russia’s anti-doping operation non-compliant with its code Friday and also concluded that the track team might not be the only Russian squad with issues.
“Any limitations, any suspensions today will not have any effect”, he said.
The report also recommended that five athletes and five coaches should be given lifetime doping bans.
Bach also met Thursday evening in Switzerland with Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov, who has strong political connections in Russia. Isinbayeva is hoping to compete in her fourth Olympics in 2016. “But I beg of you, don’t tar all athletes with the same brush”. He admitted there was some truth in the Wada report.
“We recognise however that this is just the tip of the iceberg and that, to truly tackle the scourge of doping, the anti-doping community must further improve the approach that has been employed to date; and, above all, the resources that are attributed to it”.
“This problem does not exist only in Russian Federation, but if our foreign colleagues have questions, we must answer them”, he said.
“We’ll work with them”, he told reporters in Moscow.
“It’s the personal choice of athlete that wants to deceive someone … but we never encouraged this”. “In 1990s … all public opinion was on the side of the person who doped”.
Mutko denied the finding that the anti-doping lab director Grigory Rodchenkov, who resigned on Wednesday, had deliberately destroyed 1,417 doping samples before Wada inspectors arrived, arguing that he had done so in accordance with regulations allowing old samples to be trashed.
The crisis engulfing athletics comes hot on the heels of a massive corruption scandal at world football’s top body FIFA and as cycling is still recovering from the Lance Armstrong doping scandal.
Advertisement
“WAADS takes note of the many recommendations by the commissioners and is committed to actively cooperate in finding ways to close potential loopholes in the anti-doping system effectively”, Van Eenoo, based at the University of Ghent, said. Mutko retorted that unlike Dyke, he is not a “decorative” official.
