Doping crisis claims scalps of Russia’s athletics bosses

The executive committee of Russia’s suspended athletics federation has resigned and transferred its authority to a working group

The case of high jumper Danil Lysenko has triggered the latest crisis in Russian athletics Picture: AP

The executive committee of Russia’s suspended athletics federation has resigned and transferred its authority to a working group designed to lift the organisation out of its doping crisis, the federation said.

Russia’s athletics federation was suspended in 2015 after a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) found evidence of mass doping among the country’s track and field athletes.

The federation was plunged into deeper crisis when its president and six other people were provisionally suspended last November for having provided false explanations and forged documents to justify three missed doping tests by high jumper Danil Lysenko.

The charges prompted World Athletics, the sport’s global governing body, to suspend the federation’s reinstatement procedure and bar Russian track and field athletes from competing internationally as neutrals.

The Russian federation’s woes worsened last week when the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU), the global body overseeing integrity in the sport, said the organisation had shown a “total lack of contrition” in its response to the Lysenko case and recommended that it be expelled from global athletics.

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“The crisis in Russian athletics has already lasted five years and it is clear to everyone that is had dragged on,” the federation quoted Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin as saying.

“Our common goal is to promptly normalise co-operation with World Athletics in order to restore our membership.”

World Athletics said last week that the federation could avoid expulsion if its officials admitted to their involvement in the scandal. Russia is also in the process of appealing a four-year ban from competing under its flag at major international events as punishment for having provided WADA with doctored laboratory data.

WADA said it has asked the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for a public hearing on its case for Russia’s exclusion from all international sporting competitions.

At stake in the hearing will be the fate of Russian athletes hoping to compete in such events as this year’s Tokyo Olympics and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics and 2022 football World Cup.

It will be a CAS panel that must decide whether to confirm the four-year ban WADA imposed on Russia last month after considering Russia’s case against the epic sanction.

Meanwhile, China’s state anti-doping agency “temporarily” suspended testing less than six months before the Tokyo Olympics in response to the coronavirus epidemic, says the International Testing Agency.

“The situation is one of caution so as not to endanger athletes or test officials and while recognising the importance of anti-doping activities, the priorities are to maintain public health for all,” said the ITA, the body created in 2018 to carry out drug testing worldwide.

“We are still six months away from the Tokyo games,” an ITA spokeswoman said. “It is indeed likely that this will have an impact on the testing missions in China and solutions will have to be found.”

Agencies