Russia’s ban from international athletics over widespread doping was extended on Tuesday by the sport’s governing body and the country was warned it could face further sanctions this year.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said it would consider withdrawing permission for Russian athletes to compete as neutrals in July “if progress is not made.”
It might even consider expelling Russia from the IAAF, it added after a council meeting held in Birmingham, England.
Russia has been banned from the sport since November 2015, after the McLaren Report discovered widespread doping.
Russia’s political and sporting leaders have repeatedly denied state involvement in doping, a key sticking point in lifting the ban, although Russian athletes were allowed to compete as neutrals at last year’s world championships.
The IAAF said in a statement issued after its meeting on Tuesday that “while some conditions have been met ... several key areas have still not been satisfied by RUSAF [Russian Athletics Federation] and RUSADA [Russian Anti-Doping Agency].”
This included a plan for this year “that shows an adequate amount of testing” and fixing legal issues which prevent athletics coaches from being provisionally banned.
Russia is still regarded as non-compliant by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
However, the country has been reinstated by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after being banned from the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea last month, where Russians could compete as neutrals.
Separately, the IAAF said it had agreed to a set of principles to allow athletes to transfer allegiance from one country to another. Transfers have been banned since the IAAF ordered an immediate freeze in February last year.
Unlike some other sports such as soccer, athletics allows its competitors to switch nationalities even after they have competed for one country. Several dozen athletes changed allegiance on the eve of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
The new rules would include a minimum three-year wait, a review panel to “determine the credibility of applications” and evidence the new country was offering full citizenship rights.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier