“A tainted system that cast doubts on every athlete who is part of it”.
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The International Association of Athletics Federations made the announcement at a press conference Friday in Vienna.
“Last month, the IPC wrote to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the current Independent Commission chaired by Richard McLaren to verify whether any of the current allegations regarding Russian Federation extend to Para sport and Para athletes”.
But there is outrage in the swimming community that governing body FINA has not taken allegations of Russian doping more seriously. The IAAF upheld its ban on Russia’s track and field team f.
On Saturday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said it welcomed the IAAF’s “strong stance against doping”.
‘If we have in any way created a road map or template for other sports, then that has to be a virtuous outcome, ‘ said Coe after he announced there will be no Russian athletics team at the Olympics for the first time since the Soviet era boycott of 1984.
But IAAF president Sebastian Coe, who won Olympic 1500 metres gold and 800m silver for Britain at the 1980 Moscow Games, wrote in Britain’s Sunday Telegraph: “We have not prevented clean athletes from Russia from competing, rather the Russian system has cataclysmically failed their clean athletes”. Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova was also given the chance to apply to compete as an independent athlete.
Still, the IOC must decide the details of how those athletes would be represented, including whether they would compete under the Olympic flag or some other symbol.
The IAAF’s ban on the Russian athletes could be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, based on the argument that it’s unfair to collectively punish the whole team for the violations of some athletes.
“The IAAF should be disbanded”, Mutko was quoted as saying.
“It’s an global federation’s right to suspend a national federation and I don’t think we would overturn that at all”, Coates, one of the IOC’s most powerful officials, told reporters in Melbourne.
And with the IOC having already announced its “Olympic summit.to address the hard decision between collective responsibility and individual justice”, many observers had expected Olympic chiefs to dilute the punishment.
The 800-meter runner, who served a two-year ban for blood doping before helping expose cheating in Russian Federation, was given IAAF dispensation to apply to compete as an independent athlete for her “extraordinary contribution to the fight against doping”.
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The IOC’s 16-member board, which includes president Thomas Bach, WADA president Sir Craig Reedie and CAS president John Coates added that the “eligibility of athletes in any global competition including the Olympic Games is a matter for the respective worldwide federation”.
