Athletics

IOC mulls sanctions against Russia

06 January 2019 - 00:00 By Reuters

The International Olympic Committee's (IOC) Athletes' Commission indicated on Friday it would support fresh sanctions on Russia by the World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) after a missed doping data deadline.
A Wada Compliance Review Committee (CRC) will meet in Montreal on January 14-15 to hear from an inspection team whose five members were not allowed to retrieve data from a Moscow laboratory by a December 31 deadline.
The CRC will then submit a report to the Wada executive committee and could recommend that the Russian anti-doping agency, Rusada, once again be ruled non-compliant and face new sanctions.
The Athletes' Commission went out on a limb in supporting Wada's decision last September to conditionally reinstate Rusada, which had been suspended since November 2015 over alleged doping.
Other athletes' groups and anti-doping organisations had spoken out strongly against Rusada's reinstatement while the Russian athletics federation remains banned by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
"As members of the IOC Athletes' Commission we are extremely disappointed and concerned by the fact that Rusada has missed the deadline," the Athletes' Commission said in a statement.
"We expect the CRC in its meeting... to make the appropriate recommendations to the Wada executive committee in the light of its decision of September 2018.
"These recommendations should lead to immediate measures and actions."
While not spelling out the "appropriate recommendations", the statement noted that support for Rusada's provisional reinstatement had been made on the understanding that a missed deadline would lead to "stronger sanctions"...

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