Russia in World Athletics’ spotlight just months from Olympics

MONACO: World Athletics will decide Thursday whether to start the procedure of reinstating the new-look Russian athletics federation, as well as initiating the process to allow Russian athletes who test clean to compete under a neutral banner at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Russia has been suspended by World Athletics (then known as the IAAF) since 2015 over repeated doping scandals -- a ban upheld 12 times -- and has been fighting for readmission. Moscow’s case has been made more complicated after the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in December imposed a four-year ban from all international sporting competitions on Russia over what it considers a state-sponsored programme of doping, a suspension the country took to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). CAS, the world’s highest sporting court, will now have to decide whether to confirm the WADA ban, or listen to Russia’s case against the sanction. A ruling is not expected before May, with the Tokyo Olympics scheduled to start on July 24, in just 135 days. The International Olympic Committee said CAS had to make a clear-cut decision, with no room for "any kind of interpretation", over whether Russia was to be banned not just from Tokyo, but also the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar. WADA says Russia "manipulated" data from an anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, the latest episode in a scandal which started with the revelation in 2015 of long-term institutional doping that involved senior officials, secret agents and trafficked urine vials. Under the sanctions, Russian sportsmen and women will still be allowed to compete at the Olympics this summer as neutrals, but only if they can demonstrate that they were not part of doping network.