Russia's track and field team baed from 2016 Rio Olympics

Track and field’s global goveing body has decided that Russian track athletes will not be allowed to compete in the Olympic Games later this summer in Rio de Janeiro because of the country’s failure to comply with inteational anti-doping guidelines after it was revealed that top Russian athletes, coaches and officials were involved in a state-sponsored doping program.

In aouncing the decision, IAAF president Sebastian Coe said that while Russia’s anti-doping program has made some progress in recent months Russian athletes “couldn’t credibly retu to inteational competition without undermining confidence of their competitors and the public.”

The IAAF council’s unanimous decision Friday in Viea not to lift a ban preventing Russian athletes competing inteationally only impacts track and field athletes. The IAAF on Friday also approved measures that individual Russian athletes and whistleblowers would be allowed to compete in Rio if they pass through stringent drug testing conducted on behalf of the IAAF.

Because “the (Russian) system is tainted from the top level and down we can’t trust that what people might call clean athletes are actually clean,” said Rune Andersen, chairman of an IAAF task force monitoring Russia’s anti-doping program and track federation in recent months.

The Inteational Olympic Committee will consider whether to ban all Russian athletes during a Tuesday meeting at the IOC’s headquarters in Lausae.

The decision by the IAAF’s 27-member council follows a series of devastating reports in recent month from an independent investigation commissioned by the World Anti Doping Agency and media exposes that revealed a doping program that included Russian Olympic champions and was implemented by the very officials hired to detect cheating.

The IAAF on November 17 provisionally suspended Russia from competing in or hosting inteational track events after the release of a 325-page report from the independent investigation commissioned by WADA and led by Dick Pound, the former WADA president, outlined “a deeply rooted culture of cheating,” a state-sponsored doping program” in which Russian athletes were tipped off about upcoming drug tests, and Russian anti-doping agency employees routinely accepted bribes to cover up positive tests.

Moscow drug testing lab officials admitted to intentionally destroying more than 1,400 drug test samples a few days before a WADA inspection, according to the Pound report.

While Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko in recent weeks and months has both apologized for the scandal and pointed out doping issues in other countries, in particular U.S. sprinting, IOC vice president John Coates of Australia insisted the ban remain in place, calling the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) and track federation “rotten to the core.”

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IAAF president Sebastian Coe said Russian officials had to prove the nation’s drug testing program is in compliance with WADA in order for goveing body to lift the inteational ban.

But “Play True—Update on the Status of Russia Testing,” a WADA follow up report on Russia anti-doping practices released just this week, said that between November 18 and May 29 736 required tests of Russian athletes conducted on behalf of WADA and the IAAF were cancelled or declined. During that same period Russian athletes tested positive 52 times. Testers repeatedly found it hard to locate Russian athletes. Although athletes are required to provide officials with their whereabouts to facilitate out of competition testing, one Russian athlete could not be located for nine weeks. Another athlete’s whereabouts at the time of the report’s publication remained unknown.

The IAAF task force, Andersen also said, found a the “deep-seeded culture of tolerance or worse appears not to have been changed to date.” Andersen said RUSADA was still 18 to 24 months away from being in compliance with WADA guidelines.

The WADA report also details how one Russian track athlete tried to conceal a container of clean urine inside herself in attempt to provide a clean urine sample.

WADA officials also said testing crews trying to test athletes, especially in military cities, were routinely intimidated, delayed and threatened with expulsion by FSB agents and other security persoel.

The WADA report came after Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Russian drug testing lab director and the person most responsible for detecting doping violations recently told the New York Times he he helped top Russian athletes dope in the months leading up to the 2012 and 2014 Olympic Games in by providing them three-steroid cocktails on a regular basis.

Rodchenkov also said during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi he snuck back into the drug testing lab in the middle of the night with the aide of the FSB, Russia’s successor to the Soviet-era KGB, to switch tainted urine samples from doped athletes for clean ones collected from them months earlier. Rodchenkov was provided with a spread sheet of athletes on the doping program a few weeks before the Sochi Games. During the Olympics a Russian sports ministry official would provide him with a list of medal-wiing athletes who needed their post-competition urine samples switched with clean samples. The scheme was part of a doping operation that had been plaed years in advance of the Games.

IOC officials expect weightlifting’s inteational goveing body to issue a similar ban of Russian athletes.

Coates, the president of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, told reporters this week he expected the IOC next week to consider setting up a procedure in which individual Russian athletes could appeal Olympic bans.

“We will look at the next step for us,” Coates said. “The debate next Tuesday will be on the issue of individual justice and rights.

“I would think there would be appeal opportunities, I would imagine for someone who can establish their individual integrity. It may be that our meeting next week will set some guidelines for the inteational federations who again would have the task of deciding if there’s any individual within a federation that they’ve put out who ought to be allowed in, what hurdles that person would need to have to jump.

“My guess is they’d have to establish they were regularly tested outside of Russia by an anti-doping authority and the samples were analyzed outside of Russia on a regular basis.”