Russia Provisionally Suspended By Iaaf

Russia’s athletics federation has been provisionally suspended from international competition for its alleged involvement in widespread doping.

The IAAF’s council members voted 22-1 in favour of the ban, which includes the Olympic Games, following the publication of an independent World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report that alleged “state-sponsored doping”.

As it stands, Russian athletes may not enter international competitions and will not be entitled to host the 2016 World Race Walking Cup in Cheboksary and the 2016 World Junior Championships in Kazan, as originally planned.

The IAAF says that unless the Russian Athletics Federation (Araf) voluntarily accepts a full suspension, it is entitled to proceed to a full hearing on whether the provisional suspension should be made full.

The Wada commission, led by chairman Dick Pound, suggested Araf, Russia’s anti-doping agency (Rusada) and the Russian Federation as a whole could not be considered anti-doping code-compliant, because of what it claimed was widespread cheating.

The report claimed to have evidence of “direct intimidation and interference by the Russian state with the Moscow laboratory operations”, while Rusada gave athletes advance notice of tests, hid missed tests, bullied doping control officers and their families and took bribes to cover up missed tests, it said.

The commission’s findings also claim that London 2012 was “sabotaged” by widespread inaction against athletes with suspicious doping profiles.

Wada’s report also recommended that five athletes and five coaches should be given lifetime bans for alleged doping violations, including Mariya Savinova and Ekaterina Poistogova, 800m gold and bronze medallists, respectively, at London 2012.

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