IAAF officials explored covering up Russian Federation bans

As well as the European records review and a call to the IAAF and WADA to implement tougher penalties for doping offences, Hansen also gives details on other initiatives in his statement, including “I Run Clean” which saw athletes wear that statement on their bibs at the European Cross Country Championships in December, a governance compliance audit for European Athletics, anti-doping education and the assessment and monitoring of national anti-doping systems.

“Not only are these athletes cheating their fellow competitors but, at these levels, are putting their health and even their own lives in very serious danger”.

Perhaps pre-emptively, the IAAF announced last week that it had imposed bans from the sport on Doll; Diack’s son, Papa Massata Diack, a former marketing consultant to the organisation; Valentin Balakhnichev, a former president of the All-Russia Athletic Federation; and Alexei Melnikov, a former Russian coach for long-distance walkers and runners.

Sessions also focused on organizational issues that are necessary to quickly consider doping cases, investigating problems mentioned in the report by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) Independent Commission, collecting information about the location of athletes and comprehensive testing of Russian athletes before WADA restores the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA), as well as educational and other measures necessary for introducing zero tolerance policy for doping in Russian athletics. “This has been a shameful wake-up call”, Sebastian Coe, the British Olympian and newly elected president of the International Association of Athletics Federations, said.

In the letter, Weiss asks Balakhnichev what internal sanctions the athletes with suspicious blood tests will face.

“WADA found out more than we could ever find ourselves”, he said. The papers span 2009, when the IAAF started using new blood-screening techniques to snare dopers, to 2015, when the crisis became a scandal possibly even graver than that at football governing body FIFA.

The World Anti-Doping Agency is scheduled to release the second part of its report on Russian athletics later this week. The source believes the documents show that the governing body tried to do its job in dealing with Russian Federation and that many people inside the organization were aware of and involved in that effort before the IAAF’s abrupt U-turn last November, when its council voted 22-1 to ban Russian Federation.

Turner said a colleague of Dolle’s in the anti-doping department objected at the time to the proposed non-disclosure of bans and they were published.

The notes proposed by-the-book sanctions for elite Russians likely to win in London, but “rapid and discreet” handling for lesser-known athletes whose disappearance from competition would probably go unnoticed.

A second Independent Commission report is due to be released tomorrow in Munich with Hansen already stating that he does not expect Russia’s ban from the sport to be lifted in time for the country to compete at this Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

In response to questions about the AP report, the IAAF told Reuters that the letters did not show any evidence of wrong-doing and that it followed correct procedures in all the cases.

The country’s doping lab, which was at the center of the doping ring, has since been closed.

The IAAF later tells the AP this note was sent by Dolle to Habib Cisse, who was the legal counsel to IAAF President Lamine Diack.

With files from Agence France Presse and the Associated Press.