Russian Sports Minister vows to clean-up troubled athletics body in doping fight

The Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko says he is determined to fight the use of doping by the country’s athletes.

The worldwide Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) suspended ARAF last week following allegations of widespread and state-sponsored doping as detailed in a World Anti-Doping Agency independent commission report.

As a result of the sanction, Russian athletes will not be able to compete at the 2016 Olympic Games and IAAF president Sebastian Coe said that would only change if certain criteria were met.

Russia’s track and field athletes will be eligible for the Olympics only if the country falls into line with all global anti-doping rules and the reforms are verifiable, IOC President Thomas Bach said Sunday in an interview with The Associated Press.

“The situation is compliance”, he said by telephone from Lausanne, Switzerland.

A large part of the allegations in the 323-page report centers around the Moscow lab which processed samples from Russian athletes on behalf of the athletics federation, and tested them for banned performance-enhancing drugs. “If you can not qualify, you can not participate in the Games”.

The ARAF sent a detailed report on its activities over the recent years to the IAAF on Thursday along with its official reaction on the report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

However, he believes it doesn’t have enough time to get its house in order before the Rio Olympics in August next year.

“We’d like to allow WADA to have the ability to robustly examine countries, rather than rely on self-reporting”, Kenworthy said.

According to Mr Mutko, the Russian Olympic flag plan would be a way to keep their athletes in top form. “This partially explains such a tough decision with regard to Russia’s Athletics Federation”, Zelichenok was quoted as saying by state-run newswire R-Sport agency.

But former WADA head Dick Pound – who served as the head of the independent commission – said that Russia’s participation in Rio would depend on its ability to promptly clean up its act.

Bach also downplayed a suggestion by Isinbayeva’s coach, Evgeny Trofimov, that Russians could compete in Rio as independent athletes under the International Olympic Committee flag.

Reedie backed Lord Coe to confront what he admitted was the worst scandal he had seen in his decades in sports administration, amid intense scrutiny of the IAAF president over his ties to a regime that is under investigation for allegedly taking bribes to cover up doping.