Kremlin, Russian Media Slam Allegations of State-Sponsored Doping

Dick Pound, chairman of the commission behind the report, warned that Russian athletes were likely to miss the Rio Olympics in 2016 unless the country could demonstrate it was cleaning up its act.

“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”, the IOC Executive Board decided, according to a press release.

“There’s a big credibility issue with Russian sport and the interference of the Russian state in sport”, says Collins, who is also a member of the House of Commons Select Committee for Culture, Media and Sport.

Russia’s sports ministry has said it is open to co-operating more closely with Wada after its report found evidence that doping was “state-sponsored”.

“As long as there is no evidence, it is hard to consider the accusations, which appear rather unfounded”, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the report.

The 59-year-old Coe, who has taken a few flak over the IAAF’s role in the scandal, will also be quizzed about continuing as a Nike brand ambassador.

Warner says “the worst thing would be for Russian Federation…to host the juniors and we find out that nothing has changed”.

“(We) give our full backing and support to the IAAF President Sebastian Coe in his efforts to lead the sport through the hard and complicated process ahead”, he said.

“This was an absolutely politically motivated statement like anti-Russian sanctions”, Vladimir Uyba, the head of Russia’s Federal Medical-Biological Agency, told the Interfax news agency.

The recommendation was contained in a report following investigations by WADA that the Russian federation helped athletes cover up doping offences.

Russian Federation finished second behind the United States in athletics at the 2012 Olympics, with 17 medals, eight of them gold, and has always been one of the chief players in track and field. That official managed to smuggle the samples out of Russian Federation to a Swiss lab where a few tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. We have been in close co-operation with RUSADA on all the anti-doping education programmes for different categories of athletes and coaches.

The Moscow anti-doping laboratory needed to be stripped of its accreditation and its director fired, the commission further said.

Now she, along with nine other athletes and coaches, face a lifetime ban after the World Anti-Doping Agency reported them as suspected cheats.

The panel’s findings called for athletics’ governing body (IAAF) to suspend Russia’s athletics body (ARAF) and declare it “non-compliant” with globally agreed doping regulations.

IAAF’s Ethics Commission also accused Diack, two senior Russian athletics officials and a former director of the IAAF’s Anti-Doping Department of concealing doping violations byRussian athlete Liliya Shobukhova.