Isinbayeva: Don’t ban Russian Federation

The head of Russia’s athletics federation said on Thursday he had sent the sport’s governing body a report responding to doping allegations made by the world anti-doping agency.

The report – commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and led by former WADA President and worldwide Olympic Committee Vice President Dick Pound – detailed a “deeply rooted culture of cheating at all levels” of Russian athletics.

“We’re convinced the new [IAAF] president, Sebastian Coe, will do whatever is necessary and we think also that Russia will cooperate to make progress and to make sure that Russian athletics is compliant with WADA, and this is what it needs to be in order to participate in the Olympic Games”.

Officials voted 22-1 in favour of the provisional sanction, which comes in the wakes of damning revelations of cover-ups by the World Anti-Doping Agency last week. The Russian athletics federation (ARAF) will point out that its president Valentin Balakhnichev resigned after the ARD programme, and that there is a new Russian member on the IAAF council.

“Today we have been dealing with the failure of ARAF and made the decision to provisionally suspend them, the toughest sanction we can apply at this time”, Coe said.

But Bishop said she believes there are many “true, clean athletes out there” and she hopes they are able to capture the spotlight, so that “this doesn’t completely ruin the sport of track and field”.

That appeared unlikely, with the country’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, branding yesterday’s decision “very strange”.

The worldwide federation stated that its penalty will stand until Russia meets a list of criteria.

A WADA-initiated independent investigative commission rolled out a report on Monday accusing Russian Federation of numerous violations of global anti-doping codes.

Pole vault world record holder Yelena Isinbayeva had urged the IAAF not to ban Russia from its competitions, saying in an open letter it would be “unfair” to suspend those Russian athletes not connected to the doping scandal.

In the short term, the suspension will keep Russian out of a dozen or so worldwide events the rest of this year, including the European cross-country championships in France on December 13.

“This is not about politics, this is about protection of clean athletes”, Coe said.

The country is definitely barred from hosting both the 2016 World Race Walking Cup and next year’s World Junior Championships. “If we find that someone must be held responsible for something of the sort that breaks the rules in place against doping, then the responsibility must be personalised – that’s the rule”.

And while the independent commission explored allegations regarding the Russian track team, the WADA panel also noted “that the situation described by the (independent commission) could possibly exist in other sport disciplines in Russia”, the summary said.

Lord Coe also faces tough questions about continuing as a Nike brand ambassador with committee member Damian Collins arguing that it “can’t be right for the president of the IAAF to be sponsored by Nike”.