Fresh IOC sanctions set to hit Russia

– The International Olympic Committee’s athlete commission indicated yesterday it would support fresh sanctions on Russia by world anti-doping agency Wada after a missed doping data deadline.

A Wada Compliance Review Committee (CRC) will meet in Montreal on January 14-15 to hear from an inspection team whose five members were not allowed to retrieve data from a Moscow laboratory by a December 31 deadline.

The CRC will then submit a report to the Wada executive committee and could recommend that Russian Anti-Doping Agency (Rusada) once again be ruled non-compliant.

The Athletes’ Commission went out on a limb in supporting Wada’s decision last September to conditionally reinstate Rusada, which had been suspended since November 2015 over alleged state-backed doping.

Other athletes’ groups and anti-doping organisations had spoken out strongly against Rusada’s reinstatement while the Russian athletics federation remains banned by the IAAF.

“As members of the IOC Athletes’ Commission, we are extremely disappointed and concerned by the fact that Rusada has missed the deadline,” the Athletes’ Commission said in a statement.

Athletes’ Commission chair Kirsty Coventry, an Olympic swimming champion and now Zimbabwean Sports Minister, said in October that “if we don’t get what we want then we must be strong in our reaction.

“If it is not done we will have to make some tough decisions,” she added.