IAAF to announce verdict as Moscow issues plea

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• published: 17 Jun 2016
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Russian athletes are set to discover if they are banned from the Rio Olympics over a massive doping scandal. RT spoke with the athletes and experts to discuss the potential ban, as Russian officials ask the IAAF to let “clean” sportsmen and women take part. The verdict is set to be announced at a press conference in Vienna later on Friday after a meeting of IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) representatives. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) first made allegations against Russia in November 2015, accusing the country’s athletics and anti-doping bodies of massively breaching anti-doping rules. The IAAF suspended Russia in November over the accusations.The All-Russia Athletic Federation (ARAF) is ready to become a member again as it has met over 40 conditions set forth by the IAAF to be accepted back, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee Aleksandr Zhukov said on Wednesday. Russian athletes are now anxiously awaiting the verdict which could put their careers at stake. Triple jump athlete Aleksey Fyodorov, 25, said: “I’ve dreamt of the Olympics since childhood, every day. I’m proud of my work, of my dad and trainer. It would be very frustrating to miss my chance because of others.” Daniil Tsiplakov, 24, a high-jump athlete, has been training for 15 years. “Our sole task is to keep training. We are hoping we'll be allowed to the Olympics, we are ready to win,” he told RT. Russia’s Olympic Committee stood up for the athletes, writing to the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and asking the body to allow those who didn’t use doping to compete. “These athletes are the majority in Russia. They try to reach their goal – participation in the Olympic Games – due to their hard work and constant training.” The commission also addressed IOC President Thomas Bach directly, hoping that “the great history and the contribution of [Russia] in the Olympics won’t be crossed out.” “We are convinced that the ban on the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Games can cause a destructive impact on the Olympic values system and irreparable damage to the development of sport in Russia. We’re asking you and the IOC to treat with humanity those many athletes whose fates are now at stake, and take a balanced and wise decision,” the letter read.Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko wrote an open letter to IAAF head Sebastian Coe, so that the world knows that “Russian sport is healthy and clean, and not like it is shown abroad.” “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 in his letter to Coe. “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.” However, the IOC vice-president, John Coates, criticized Russia's anti-doping agency and athletics body ahead of the decision. "Presenting an Olympic medal is always an honour," Coates, who is also president of the Australian Olympic Committee, said at a ceremony in Melbourne, when he belatedly awarded a London 2012 Olympics gold medal to Australia's Jared Tallent. Tallent was promoted from silver after Sergey Kirdyapkin, who claimed gold at the Olympics in 2012, was accused of doping. "But more so on this occasion to be part of rectifying, in some way, the massive injustice perpetrated on Jared by a doping cheat and aided by a Russian Anti-Doping Agency and Russian Athletics Federation that were rotten to the core."The situation is all the more difficult for Russia after the latest WADA report, claiming that hundreds of attempts to conduct drug tests on Russian athletes this year have been prevented by armed security forces. Drug testers couldn’t carry out the tests and athletes evaded doping control, the report added. At the center of the Russian doping scandal is also the use of meldonium, a drug that was banned in January. Regardless of the decision that will be taken on Friday, experts think that the focus on meldonium is hypocrisy, and that there are other, more powerful stimulants that are allowed. “For 10 years or so, meldonium wasn’t on the ban list, and it was completely legal to use. Then, by January 1, they decided to ban the previously legal drug, and it [became] a sporting crime to use it,” said Verner Moeller, who works at the Department of Public Health - Sport Science at Aarhus University, Denmark. “The list includes many drugs that don’t have any real effect and on the other hand we have creatine and caffeine which are true performance enhancers that are not on the list. There is nothing we can do about this since it is only up to WADA,” Moeller told RT. His opinion is echoed by another expert, Boris Simkhovich, M.D., Ph.D. Assistant Professor of Research Medicine at the Department of Medicine, the University of Southern California.