MOSCOW // Scandal-hit Russia will discover Friday if it has done enough to get back into world track and field’s governing body, the IAAF, in time for its athletes to compete at the Rio Olympics.
The 27-member IAAF Council, headed by president Sebastian Coe, meets in Vienna to decide whether to readmit Russia.
The IAAF provisionally suspended the All-Russian Athletic Federation (ARAF) in November over a bombshell report by a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) independent commission that said there was state-sponsored doping and mass corruption in Russian athletics.
Long-time ARAF president Valentin Balakhnichev was banned for life in January by the IAAF ethics commission for allegedly taking bribes to cover up doping by Russian athletes.
Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko has wavered between contrite apology and brash counter-attack as Moscow lobbies heavily for its reinclusion in time for the Rio Games.
In its bid to overturn the ban, Russia has announced a raft of reforms including the introduction of compulsory anti-doping classes in schools to reform attitudes toward the use of performance-enhancing drugs.
See also:
• Report: Maria Sharapova to appeal ITF doping ban: 'I cannot accept an unfairly harsh two-year suspension'
• Sports minister says Russia 'ashamed and sorry' over doping scandal
Russia’s anti-doping agency, RUSADA, will develop a special curriculum, based on Wada guidelines, for the 3,000 sports schools where the country’s elite athletes train.
International experts have been appointed to assist with reforms and a minimum of three additional “independent, externally administered anti-doping controls” for athletes hoping to compete in Rio.
The IAAF also demanded that ARAF sever ties with staff with any past involvement in doping, and abide by all Wada regulations.
Wada director-general David Howman delivered a withering response on Monday, saying the progress made by Russia was simply not enough to merit its reinstatement within the IAAF.
Commentators have suggested that the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which is to meet on June 21 on eligibility issues, could offer an olive branch to Russia by opening up participation in Rio for certain doping-vetted Russian athletes.
“It’s a plausible option,” French athletics federation president and IAAF Council member Bernard Amsalem told Agence France-Presse.
“But what are the guarantees that we can have on the Russians?
“It’s a state system and it’s difficult to make sense of things. It’s also a credibility issue for the IAAF. Our image is tarnished and the only way to rectify this is to be hard.”
Mutko added last month that Russia would not include athletes who in the past had committed “gross violations of anti-doping rules” on its Olympic team.
But Russia faces an uphill battle for its reinstatement and recent allegations by the former head of Russia’s anti-doping laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, now threaten to derail the country’s efforts to compete in Rio.
International drug testers were subjected to intimidation and threats of expulsion by Russian government agents when they attempted to carry out doping controls in military cities, a Wada report revealed Wednesday.
The report said doping control officers were threatened by “armed FSB agents” during attempts to enter military cities in Russia.
The report said military cities were often given as a place of residence by athletes because of the difficulty in gaining access to the areas.
More than 700 attempts to carry out drug tests on Russian athletes this year have been unsuccessful, Wada said Wednesday, in a damning report issued just days before a key decision on the country’s participation at the Olympic Games.
The Wada report said 736 tests between February 15 and May 29 were “declined or cancelled” for reasons ranging from sample collection problems or athlete whereabouts.
Rodchenkov, who has fled to the United States, described an organised doping campaign including at least 15 medallists during the 2014 Sochi Games, with the close involvement of the sports ministry and the FSB security service, allegations Mutko was quick to dismiss as “absurd”.
The Russian athletics doping scandal was brought to light by whistle-blowers, including runner Yulia Stepanova and her husband Vitaly Stepanov, a former RUSADA employee, who prompted Wada to investigate their shocking allegations about the prevalence of doping in Russian athletics.
Stepanova, who was slapped with a two-year suspension in 2013 for doping, and her husband were branded traitors, and like Rodchenkov, now live in exile.
Dmitry Shlyakhtin, a little-known regional official who was elected to head ARAF in January, told AFP that Rodchenkov’s allegations came out of “fantasy movies or television series”.
“All these things add negativity in terms of the final decision,” Shlyakhtin said.
French federation head Amsalem added: “When I talk to Council members, they agree with me” on being tough.
“But there’s a lot of pressure, political, all sorts, direct or indirect in each of our countries which means that some [members] will hesitate.”
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Results
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8.50pm: Handicap (TB) $135,000 (T) 1,600m
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How to book
Call DHA on 800342
Once you are registered, you will receive a confirmation text message
Present the SMS and your Emirates ID at the centre
DHA medical personnel will take a nasal swab
Check results within 48 hours on the DHA app under ‘Lab Results’ and then ‘Patient Services’
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The biog
Name: Marie Byrne
Nationality: Irish
Favourite film: The Shawshank Redemption
Book: Seagull by Jonathan Livingston
Life lesson: A person is not old until regret takes the place of their dreams
The biog
Hobby: "It is not really a hobby but I am very curious person. I love reading and spend hours on research."
Favourite author: Malcom Gladwell
Favourite travel destination: "Antigua in the Caribbean because I have emotional attachment to it. It is where I got married."
Electric scooters: some rules to remember
- Riders must be 14-years-old or over
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How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
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THE SPECS
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Some of Darwish's last words
"They see their tomorrows slipping out of their reach. And though it seems to them that everything outside this reality is heaven, yet they do not want to go to that heaven. They stay, because they are afflicted with hope." - Mahmoud Darwish, to attendees of the Palestine Festival of Literature, 2008
His life in brief: Born in a village near Galilee, he lived in exile for most of his life and started writing poetry after high school. He was arrested several times by Israel for what were deemed to be inciteful poems. Most of his work focused on the love and yearning for his homeland, and he was regarded the Palestinian poet of resistance. Over the course of his life, he published more than 30 poetry collections and books of prose, with his work translated into more than 20 languages. Many of his poems were set to music by Arab composers, most significantly Marcel Khalife. Darwish died on August 9, 2008 after undergoing heart surgery in the United States. He was later buried in Ramallah where a shrine was erected in his honour.
Our legal consultants
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Company Profile
Name: Thndr
Started: 2019
Co-founders: Ahmad Hammouda and Seif Amr
Sector: FinTech
Headquarters: Egypt
UAE base: Hub71, Abu Dhabi
Current number of staff: More than 150
Funds raised: $22 million
In numbers: PKK’s money network in Europe
Germany: PKK collectors typically bring in $18 million in cash a year – amount has trebled since 2010
Revolutionary tax: Investigators say about $2 million a year raised from ‘tax collection’ around Marseille
Extortion: Gunman convicted in 2023 of demanding $10,000 from Kurdish businessman in Stockholm
Drug trade: PKK income claimed by Turkish anti-drugs force in 2024 to be as high as $500 million a year
Denmark: PKK one of two terrorist groups along with Iranian separatists ASMLA to raise “two-digit million amounts”
Contributions: Hundreds of euros expected from typical Kurdish families and thousands from business owners
TV channel: Kurdish Roj TV accounts frozen and went bankrupt after Denmark fined it more than $1 million over PKK links in 2013
