Russian Athletics Federation urges against suspension
Last Updated: 10/11/15 3:38pm
The All-Russia Athletics Federation has urged against its suspension and says it is committed to co-operating with the athletics world in the fight against doping.
The federation said it would show the International Association of Athletics Federations details of its anti-doping programme and its response to the World Anti-Doping Agency commission's report in the coming days.
The statement comes after the commission recommended Russia be suspended from international athletics amid accusations of doping, cover-ups and extortion.
The chairman of UK Athletics, Ed Warner, backed calls for Russia to be banned from international competition.
However, the Russian Athletics Federation said it wanted a "meaningful, strategic partnership with the IAAF" and added: "The real fair partnership in this work is much more effective than any kind of suspension and isolation."
In a statement it said: "We confirm our commitment to the formation of the modern system of athletics development in Russia, our openness to the co-operation with international and national athletics federations, including co-operation in the struggle against doping.
"We have been doing this work in accordance with the programme approved by the Russian Athletic Federation council in April and supported by the delegates of the federation's annual conference on November 2, 2015.
"The new administration of the federation and the new chiefs of the national team focused their attention on the development of the system of preventive measures against doping usage.
"We have been in close co-operation with RUSADA [Russian Anti-Doping Agency] on all the anti-doping education programs for different categories of athletes and coaches. Russian Athletic Federation fights severely against anti-doping rules violations by athletes, coaches and other categories of specialists working in athletics.
"In August the Russian Athletic Federation took an unprecedented decision of excluding from the national team for the World Championships in Beijing the race walkers, regardless of their titles and previous merits. Moreover, several coaches were banned from working with athletes, and there are investigations going on with the respect to a number of specialists.
"All athletes who break anti-doping rules are disqualified regardless of their previous titles and results. The Russian Athletic Federation will continue to fight severely against any attempts of breaking the anti-doping rules and code and will response in an adequate manner to the particular allegations mentioned in the commission's report."
Elsewhere, WADA confirmed it had provisionally suspended Russia's drug-testing laboratory in Moscow.
The suspension will take place immediately and prohibit the laboratory from carrying out any WADA-related anti-doping activities, including all analyses of urine and blood samples.
In the meantime, all samples from the laboratory will be transported to an alternative WADA-accredited laboratory.
"WADA has acted swiftly to one of the key recommendations made by the independent commission in its report," said WADA president Sir Craig Reedie.
"The Moscow laboratory is provisionally suspended, and the status of the laboratory's accreditation beyond that will be decided by a disciplinary committee which will be formed shortly to review the case."
