Davies backs IAAF stance as Russia ban remains in force
British sports minister Mims Davies has welcomed the IAAF’S decision to maintain the Russian Athletics Federation’s ban until Russia reveals the secrets of its state-run doping programme.
At a meeting of its council in Monaco yesterday, athletics’ governing body rejected the ninth plea from the Russian authorities to reinstate RUSAF, which has been suspended since November 2015.
That followed a World Anti-doping Agency-funded (WADA) investigation into allegations of endemic cheating in Russian athletics – allegations that were corroborated and then extended to almost every other sport in 2016.
The extent of Russia’s doping forced the International Olympic Committee to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee before this year’s Winter Games but that sanction was lifted soon after the closing ceremony and, in September, WADA decided to drop its sanctions against the Russian Anti-doping Agency (RUSADA), as well.
Unlike WADA, however, the IAAF has resisted calls to compromise on its reinstatement criteria, which means Rusaf’s suspension will continue until independent experts get access to the Moscow laboratory at the centre of the doping scandal and Russia pays for the costs of the IAAF’S “Russia Taskforce”.
Davies said: “Doping scandals in athletics have damaged the faith of both fans and competitors, and the IAAF decision
0 IAAF President Seb Coe, left, and Rune Andersen, who heads up the body’s task force on Russia. today is a clear message that Russia must co-operate fully before it can be back in the fold. The IAAF and WADA have set out criteria of what needs to happen. For the sake of integrity in international sport and to restore the trust of athletes and fans, Russia must act and allow access to the Moscow laboratory, the relevant stored test samples and data by the end of this year.”
Davies’ reference to WADA relates to the conditions the anti-doping body placed on RUSADA when it was controversially reinstated.
WADA said Russia must let experts visit the lab, which has been locked down by Russian investigators for three years, to access the testing equipment’s raw data so anti-doping agencies can start to build cases against Russian dopers.
It gave Russia until the end of this year to comply with that demand and then until the end of June to release relevant blood or urine samples from the lab’s freezers. If Russia fails to meet these conditions, WADA has said it will ban RUSADA again. The IAAF, on the other hand, has decided to stick with its plan: compliance first, then reinstatement.
The IAAF said it had accepted its taskforce’s recommendation that Russia must give “all of the data and access to the samples” to its integrity unit so anti-doping cases can be processed. Furthermore, it said RUSAF “must pay all of the costs incurred in the work of the taskforce and in bringing or defending Russian cases at (the Court of Arbitration for Sport)”.
One of the reasons the IAAF has taken such a hard line against Russia is because the organisation’s former leadership was complicit in covering up Russian cheating.
British running great Seb Coe took over as president in August 2015 and after a rocky start he has helped to restore the IAAF’S reputation by holding Russia to account when many others have seemed eager to move on.
In other decisions on Tuesday, the IAAF awarded the 2023 World Championships to Budapest and gave national teams permission to display a sponsor’s logo on their kits at next year’s Worlds in Doha.