Ethics board extends IAAF officials' suspension
By Charlotte Bates
Last Updated: 07/12/16 5:05pm
Three senior athletics officials have had their provisional suspension from the sport extended by the IAAF's ethics board as it continues its investigation into their alleged involvement in a suspected cover-up of Russian doping cases.
Nick Davies, who was chief-of-staff to International Association of Athletics Federations president Seb Coe, along with his wife Jane Boulter-Davies and IAAF medical manager Pierre-Yves Garnier was initially suspended on June 10 and given provisional 180-day bans.
The ethics board issued a statement that its chairman, Michael Beloff QC, has "extended the orders for provisional suspension" against the trio until January 31, 2017, "to allow for the conclusion of the disciplinary investigative process".
The statement added: "Each of the three individuals continue to enjoy the presumption of innocence and the extension of the orders for provisional suspension should not be interpreted as any departure from the principle that each individual is to be considered innocent until the conclusion of the disciplinary investigative process."
Davies stood down from his role last December pending the investigation into a "potential breach of the IAAF's code of ethics".
The allegations stem from an email sent by Davies to the son of Lamine Diack - Coe's predecessor as IAAF boss - before the 2013 World Athletics Championships in Moscow which outlined a plan to delay naming Russian cheats to avoid bad publicity.
In the email to Papa Massata Diack, a marketing consultant, Davies suggested a "very secret" five-point plan to manage media reaction to doping positives.
Lamine Diack is now under house arrest in France while Papa Massata is wanted by French authorities but in hiding in his native Senegal.
Meanwhile, former Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva has been chosen to lead the new supervisory board of the Russian anti-doping agency as it struggles to recover its reputation after repeated doping scandals.
The agency, known as RUSADA, said in a statement that Isinbayeva would head a nine-person board also including sports executives, academics, and a Russian sports ministry official.
Isinbayeva's first task at Rusada will be to persuade WADA to restore the agency's compliance status, allowing it to conduct testing again.
"The effectiveness with which that fight (against doping) will be carried out in Russia depends on when RUSADA gets back its compliance," Isinbayeva said in a statement.
"That is what we see our main task to be, and we will put maximum effort into it."
