VIENNA: World athletics' governing body on Friday upheld its ban on Russia for systematic doping, leaving the country's hopes of competing in the Rio Games dependent on Olympic chiefs giving it special dispensation at a meeting next week.
Russia, an athletics superpower, had lobbied furiously to avert the prospect of a Summer Olympics taking place without its track and field athletes.
President Vladimir Putin denied on Friday that Russian authorities had ever colluded in doping, and urged authorities not to use sport to push an anti-Russian agenda. His spokesman vowed legal steps to defend Russian athletes against a ban.
Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said that innocent people were being punished and that he hoped the International Olympic Committee could “somehow correct this”, the Russian R-Sport news agency quoted him as saying.
Russia was suspended from all track and field by the IAAF in November after an independent report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) revealed widespread state-sponsored doping.
A task force has been studying Russian measures to reform its anti-doping programme. But on Wednesday, a new WADA report revealed 52 new failed tests and stories of extraordinary attempts to avoid, obstruct or intimidate drug testers.
“Some progress has been made, but not enough,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe told reporters.
The vote by the IAAF should in theory be decisive, but the IOC, concerned about innocent athletes being punished, has not ruled out granting Russia, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, a special dispensation when it meets next Tuesday.
Russia may appeal IAAF ban
Russia may appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) over the decision by athletics' world governing body to uphold a doping ban on its track and field team, Russian athletics official Mikhail Butov said.
“We need to analyse the document. If there is a basis to do so, we will go there,” Butov said when asked if Russia would take the case to the CAS, a Swiss-based organisation that settles international sporting disputes.
He was scornful of the IAAF's decision that athletes who trained outside Russia and could show they were not tainted by the Russian system might still be able to compete at the Rio Olympics as neutral competitors. “How are they supposed to do that - in a white vest?” he said.
Doping whistleblower given Olympics hope
Yulia Stepanova, the Russian former drugs cheat whose whistle blowing revelations helped expose the massive doping problem in her country, could be allowed to compete in the Rio Olympics as an independent athlete, the IAAF said on Friday.
Stepanova, an 800-metres runner described as “a courageous athlete” by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), went into hiding after revealing the details of the problem, and now lives in the United States at a secret location.
With the IAAF extending its ban on Russian athletes on Friday, and with her mother country highly unlikely to have selected her anyway, Stepanova was hoping to compete under the flag of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The IAAF had previously said the issue was a complicated legal and logistical one, but said on Friday the IAAF Council had changed its rules to clear the way.
“Any individual athlete who has made an extraordinary contribution to anti doping — in particular we include Yulia Stepanova here — should be considered favourably,” Rune Andersen, head of the IAAF's task force investigating Russian doping, told a news conference.
“I cannot say she will compete in Rio but the Council said they will look favourably.” It will now be down to the IOC to decide on the issue, possibly at its meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, next week.
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