Russia hits back at WADA over suspension threat
Last Updated: 09/11/15 5:07pm
The acting head of the Russian track and field federation has hit back at the World Anti-Doping Agency's (WADA) recommendation to suspend Russia from international athletics.
WADA has made the recommendations following an 11-month investigation from an independent three-man panel, headed by former WADA president Dick Pound, which accuses Russia of widespread doping, cover-ups and extortion.
But RusAthletics chief Vadim Zelichenok has accused WADA of circumventing established protocols for dealing with doping and insisted that anyone linked with violations should be given the chance to clear their names.
"The agency didn't follow proper procedure," he said. "Any suspension should be discussed at the meeting of the IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federations] in November.
"It should be proven that any violations were the fault of the federation and not individual sports people. We should be given the chance to clear our names.
"It is only a recommendation. Neither WADA nor the International Olympic Committee has the right to suspend Russia from world athletics."
Zelichenok believes that calls for Russia to be banned from athletics are not "objective" because the organisation's management changed in the spring, after the cases in the WADA report released in Geneva on Monday.
He said that while he "can't decide on behalf of the international federation", he hopes the IAAF will not suspend Russia and, while there have been doping cases in Russia, "I don't believe it is of a systematic nature".
Vladimir Uiba, head of the Russian government's medical-biological agency, responsible for a laboratory heavily criticised in the report, said: "This is absolutely a politically motivated statement, like anti-Russian sanctions. WADA were in charge of the anti-doping policy, they were doing the tests."
