Their reputations already tarnished, Russia’s track and field athletes now will apparently be banished from competing at the Rio Olympics this summer, following a ruling Friday by the International Association of Athletics Federations to uphold a suspension.
The BBC and Sky News were among media outlets reporting the IAAF decision ahead of an official announcement.
Reeling from multiple reports of wide-spread, systemic, state-sponsored doping, the Russian athletes were initially suspended in November. A five-member task force presented an update to the IAAF, the governing body for track and field, at a Friday afternoon meeting in Vienna.
Rather than opt for a compromise or perhaps allow athletes with no history of doping to compete at the Summer Games, council members opted to bar the entire Russian team.
Since the initial suspension, Russian officials have been proactively pushing for reform. They haven’t admitted to government involvement but have acknowledged doping problems on the nation’s Olympic teams and mounted an aggressive public relations campaign in response.
On Wednesday, Vitaly Mutko, the Russian Federation’s minister of sport, wrote a letter to the Sebastian Coe, the IAAF president, as well as IAAF council members, pleading his country’s case and outlining preventative measures that have been taken in recent months.
“Clean athletes who have dedicated years of their lives to training and who never sought to gain unfair advantage through doping should not be punished for the past actions of other individuals,” Mutko wrote. “Additionally, Russia’s athletes must not be singled out as the only ones to be punished for a problem that is widely acknowledged to go far beyond our country’s borders.”
Russian athletes have faced myriad charges of wrong-doing in recent months, most recently a WADA report that was released Wednesday, two days before the IAAF council meeting. The report detailed some of the measures Russian athletes have taken to avoiding drug testing in the months that followed the initial IAAF suspension of the country’s track and field teams.
The report detailed one incident in which an “athlete used a container inserted inside her body (presumably containing clean urine). When she tried to use the container it leaked on to the floor and not into the collection vessel. The athlete threw the container into the trash which was retrieved by [a doping official]. The athlete also tried to bribe the [doping official].”
The report found that many athletes failed to properly report their whereabouts for tests, and that doping control officers often faced intimidation. In addition, some athletes would report their whereabouts as military cities, where “athletes know that special permission is needed to gain access,” the report stated, noting that “athletes provide this location even if they aren’t there, to deter test planning.”
The Russian athletes might still have options. Though the IAAF council is not expected to meet again before the Summer Games, Russia’s sports ministry could appeal a decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, an international body created to settle disputes of this nature. It’s also possible that the International Olympic Committee steps in and grants some leniency. IOC President Thomas Bach enjoys a close relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, and has publicly implied that individual athletes from a banned team could still compete in Rio.
