Russia’s track and field athletes will not be able to compete in the Rio Olympics, the International Association of Athletics Federations announced Friday, but individual athletes do have a way forward to compete as a neutral athlete.
In a historic decision, the IAAF voted unanimously to extend a ban of the All-Russia Athletics Federation (ARAF or RusAF) that has kept its athletes out of international competition since a World Anti-Doping Agency independent commission report released in November concluded Russia was running a state-sponsored doping program in athletics.
Noting significant progress toward satisfying verification criteria being monitored by an IAAF task force, Rune Andersen, chair of that group, said several other criteria have not been satisfied.
“In particular, the deep-seated culture of tolerance, or worse, for doping, that got RusAF suspended in the first place appears not to have been changed materially, to date,” he said in a news conference announcing the IAAF decision.
“The head coach of the Russian athletic team and many of the athletes on that team appear unwilling to acknowledge the nature and extent of the doping problem in Russian athletics, and certain athletes and coaches appear willing to ignore the doping rules. A strong and effective anti-doping infrastructure capable of detecting and deterring doping has still not been created.”
The IAAF council accepted the following recommendations from its task force monitoring the verification process:
► That Russia’s track and field federation not be reinstated.
► That the council pass a rule amendment allowing individual athletes who can “clearly and convincingly” show they have been subject to effective anti-doping systems and have not been tainted by the Russian system be able to apply to compete in international competitions as a neutral athlete.
► That athletes who have made “an extraordinary contribution to the fight against doping” be able to apply for that exception, particularly that the case of whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova be viewed favorably.
► That no RusAF officials, athletes or support personnel take part in international competition or IAAF affairs.
In the news conference, Andersen said efforts to test athletes in Russia have “encountered serious obstacles.” Additionally, RusAF is unable to enforce all doping bans and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency is 18-24 months away from compliance with the WADA code.
“The statement that we’ve made today is a very clear indication that over the long haul, our responsibility is to protect clean athletes and this is what this says,” IAAF President Sebastien Coe said. “In a system that has so badly failed the athletes in Russia, it is extremely difficult to define or have any presumption that athletes are in a safe and secure enough system for us to conclude that they are eligible for international competition.”
Already, the decision is set to face challenges. Pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, told Russian news agency TASS that she would file a discrimination case in the court for human rights.
In a statement, the Russian Ministry of Sport said it felt it had met the IAAF’s criteria and appealed to the International Olympic Committee, which is holding a summit Tuesday to discuss “the difficult decision between collective responsibility and individual justice.”
The statement said, in part, “Clean athletes’ dreams are being destroyed because of the reprehensible behavior of other athletes and officials. They have sacrificed years of their lives striving to compete at the Olympics and now that sacrifice looks likely to be wasted.”
Andersen made clear that the exception for athletes would be narrow, saying the task force was advised by legal counsel to head off legal challenges that could come to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
“The crack in the door, or the opening to apply for this is quite narrow,” Andersen said, “so there won’t be many athletes that will manage to get through the crack of that door because it’s clearly, they have to demonstrate that they have been subject to a credible anti-doping control system and that they are not tainted by the system in Russia.”
Doping entrenched in Russia
In the task force’s report to the IAAF council, it made clear how entrenched the culture of doping is in the country.
While the Russian federation replaced its entire council, decided to bar any athlete with a serious anti-doping rules violation from being considered for Olympic team selection and announced anti-doping classes would be taught in schools, among other improvements, it fell short of several other criteria.
In an interviews with the task force, Isinbayeva and Yuriy Burzakovskiy, the head coach of the Russian national team, acknowledged they have not read the independent commission report although both have made public statements dismissing its contents.
After retesting of samples from the Beijing and London Olympics revealed that 16 Russian track and field athletes had tested positive, Tatyana Firova, a 400-meter runner and one of those athletes, told the task force last week, “A normal person can take banned substances if they want to, so why can’t athletes take them as well? How else can we achieve high results?”
While the IAAF criteria required the Russian federation to create an environment that encourages whistleblowing, the task force found the federation, Russian Olympic Committee and Ministry of Sport “have adopted at best a highly ambivalent attitude” toward Stepanova. Last week, a spokesman for President Vladimir Putin referred to her as “Judas,” the report noted.
The task force noted a preliminary finding from a WADA investigation being led by Richard McLaren that there is sufficient evidence of “a mandatory state-directed manipulation of laboratory analytical results” in the Moscow lab from at least 2011 forward, a time period that includes the IAAF World Championships in Moscow in 2013. The Ministry of Sport advised the lab which findings to report to WADA and which to cover up, according to the task force report.
Such is the culture that no athlete can be presumed to be clean as a record of negative tests “is no guarantee of anything,” the report noted. It referenced a letter sent to the IAAF council in November by 14 “clean” Russian athletes asking not to be held responsible for others’ doping.
Two of those athletes have since tested positive in the retesting of Beijing and London samples.
The task force considered in preparing its report information released by WADA on Wednesday detailed attempts at obstruction, obfuscation and avoidance of drug testing in the country as recently as last month.
Of the 2,947 tests of Russian athletes in all sports from Nov. 18 to May 25, the IAAF conducted 655 and UKAD 455. From Feb. 15 to May 29, 736 tests were declined or canceled and there were 111 whereabouts failures.
“Certainly from all of the evidence that I saw, and I would expect they would have had more, it was clear the Russians had not done much to change their ways, even though they had lots of time to do it if they wanted to,” said former WADA president Dick Pound, who led the independent commission.
“Having seen that the IAAF was prepared to suspend them provisionally on the basis of the independent commission report, and you know they’ve appointed a task force with an independent chair to follow up things, you know that the German television program was pretty damning, you know that the WADA report about the difficulties they were having in Russia doing testing — you add all that together and you say what is possessing them to persist with that course of conduct? And why would they think that the IAAF would change its mind?”
IAAF action draws praise
The decisive action by the IAAF drew praise from athletes and anti-doping officials who were previously skeptical of whether meaningful sanctions would follow the uncovering of such widespread doping. Russian officials have for months wavered between flat-out denials of doping outside of a few bad apples to saying they were changing the culture around anti-doping in the country.
“I think it’s a really monumental and historic day in many ways for clean athletes and for clean, fair sports,” said Canadian Beckie Scott, chair of the WADA athletes’ committee. “We really commend the IAAF for siding on what we feel is the right side of the sport.”
Scott and Sarah Konrad, chair of the U.S. Olympic Committee’s athletic advisory council, have been among those calling for a greater investigation into Russia since November, when the independent commission report suggested doping could be a problem in other sports.
WADA is now conducting an investigation, led by McLaren, into doping at the Sochi Olympics after Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of the Moscow lab, alleged in the New York Times last month that he had not only doped Russian athletes at the Games but that he swapped out the urine in those doping samples with the assistance of someone he believed to be from Russia’s security service.
WADA expects that report to be complete its report by July 15.
In light of those allegations, plus what is known about doping in athletics, confidence in sport organizations to respond appropriately has wavered.
“It’s been hard to keep faith in the system over the past year,” Konrad said. “I guess we’ll see what the next steps are. This is a lot bigger than athletics. There are more decisions to be made, but it’s a really, really great step in the right direction.
“This was just an incredibly and necessary decision, actually, to allow the Olympic movement to survive.”
USA Track & Field president and IAAF council member Stephanie Hightower called the process “thorough and fair” in a statement. Few in Russia are likely to agree, but outside of Russia, support echoed for the decision.
“What would we give to go back and hold East Germany accountable. It wasn’t,” said U.S. Anti-Doping CEO Travis Tygart. “Today, those who value the Olympic movement can be proud. We said a state and a federation infected by this level of corruption can be held accountable. And hopefully it sends a loud message that scares off any state in the future. If they attempt to get away (with it) … it’s not worth the risk.”
Contributing: Nancy Armour, Paul Myerberg
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