Pressure mounts on IAAF chief Lord Coe to issue Russia with bans following report by a World Anti-Doping Agency independent commission
Athletics chief Lord Coe faced mounting pressure last night after the International Olympic Committee urged governing body the IAAF to ban Russian drug cheats.
IAAF president Coe has given Russia until the end of the week to respond to accusations of systemic doping, extortion and corruption contained within a report released on Monday by a World Anti-Doping Agency [Wada] independent commission.
The report recommended that Russia’s athletes be suspended from all international competition, potentially incorporating next year’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, after finding evidence of state-supported doping.
It also called for five athletes and five coaches, including London 2012 medallists Mariya Savinova-Farnosova and Ekaterina Poistogova, to be handed lifetime bans – a stance backed by the IOC executive board.
“The IOC has asked the IAAF to initiate disciplinary procedures against all athletes, coaches and officials who have participated in the Olympic Games and are accused of doping in the report of the independent commission,” read yesterday’s statement.
“With its zero-tolerance policy against doping, following the conclusion of this procedure, the IOC will take all the necessary measures and sanctions with regard to the withdrawal and reallocation of medals and as the case may be exclusion of coaches and officials from future Olympic Games.”
The IOC also took the decision yesterday to provisionally suspend Coe’s predecessor as IAAF president Lamine Diack, who is being investigated by French police over allegations he accepted bribes to cover up positive drugs tests.
Russia’s drug-testing laboratory in Moscow, meanwhile, saw its Wada accreditation withdrawn pending a disciplinary hearing after it was uncovered that 1,417 samples were deliberately destroyed by officials.
Despite the storm engulfing athletics and Russia in particular, the country’s president Vladimir Putin insisted yesterday that there was no basis for the contents of Wada’s report.
“There is no evidence so it is difficult to consider the accusations, which appear rather unfounded,” said Putin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov.
UK Athletics chairman Ed Warner insisted that Russia is unlikely to be the only country with a deep-rooted doping problem, but has called for their international suspension and for them to be stripped of hosting next year’s world junior championships in Kazan.
“I am all for the suspension until the systems in Russia are proved to be robust,” said Warner. “If you suspend the Russian athletics federation you then have to remove the world junior championships – cancel them and take them elsewhere.”