{"id":23409,"date":"2016-06-21T08:00:44","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/doping-summit-to-tackle-further-measures-ahead-of-rio-games\/"},"modified":"2016-06-21T08:00:44","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T15:00:44","slug":"doping-summit-to-tackle-further-measures-ahead-of-rio-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/doping-summit-to-tackle-further-measures-ahead-of-rio-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Doping summit to tackle further measures ahead of Rio Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

LAUSANNE, Switzerland <\/strong>\u2014 With a ban on Russia\u2019s track and field athletes already in place, Olympic leaders are looking at further anti-doping measures ahead of the Rio de Janeiro Games.<\/p>\n

The status of other sports in Russia, as well as other countries and sports with poor doping records, could come under scrutiny at an Olympic summit in Lausanne on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The sports leaders are also expected to discuss guidelines for the process, approved by the IAAF, which would allow a small group of Russian athletes who live and undergo rigorous drug-testing outside the country to apply to compete as \u201cneutral\u201d athletes in Rio without any Russian flag.<\/p>\n

The meeting comes four days after track and field\u2019s world governing body upheld the ban, first imposed in November, on Russia\u2019s track and field team for a \u201csystematic and deeply-rooted culture of doping.\u201d<\/p>\n

The International Olympic Committee said Saturday it \u201cfully respects\u201d the decision and acknowledged that the IAAF has control over the eligibility of track and field athletes for the games.<\/p>\n

The statement appeared to rule out any chance of the IOC intervening to overturn or water down the decision or somehow give the Russians another route into the games.<\/p>\n

The IOC went even further, saying it would undertake \u201cfurther far-reaching measures in order to ensure a level playing field for all the athletes\u201d competing in Rio. It said the meeting would discuss the situation of countries that are not in compliance with the World Anti-Doping Agency\u2019s global rules.<\/p>\n

In addition to Russia, Kenya \u2014 home to many of the world\u2019s top distance runners \u2014 and Spain are currently deemed non-compliant by WADA. Kenya has been hit by dozens of positive drug cases in recent years and has struggled to set up a credible anti-doping system.<\/p>\n

The doping crisis extends beyond Russia\u2019s track and field athletes and beyond Russia itself. WADA President Craig Reedie said Monday that the agency has started investigating allegations of doping by the Russian and Chinese swimming teams.<\/p>\n

The entire sport of weightlifting, which has a long history of doping, remains under the microscope. The sport has accounted for 20 of the 55 positive findings recorded so far in the IOC\u2019s retesting of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.<\/p>\n

Russian athletes \u2014 including 16 from track and field \u2014 have provided 22 of the positive samples from the Beijing and London retests.<\/p>\n

Still looming heavily over the Russians is an ongoing WADA investigation into allegations made by Moscow\u2019s former drug lab chief, Grigory Rodchenkov, that he was involved in a state-backed conspiracy to dope Russian athletes ahead of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and swap tainted samples for clean ones during the games.<\/p>\n

Richard McLaren, the Canadian lawyer heading the independent probe, said Friday that his preliminary findings backed allegations that the Russian Sports Ministry was involved in manipulating test results before, during and after the IAAF world championships in Moscow in 2013.<\/p>\n

McLaren\u2019s final report is due by July 15. If it uncovers further widespread, state-backed cheating in Russia, WADA could push for further action against Russia. The possibility of Russia\u2019s entire team being excluded from the Rio Games has been called the \u201cnuclear option\u201d by former WADA president Dick Pound.<\/p>\n

In its ruling Friday, the IAAF did offer the chance to Russians who have been living abroad and subjected to a verifiable drug-testing regime to apply to compete as independent athletes. However, IAAF officials said only a handful of athletes fall into that category and stressed that no Russians would compete under their national flag at the games.<\/p>\n

Still, the IOC must decide the details of how those athletes would be represented, including whether they would compete under the Olympic flag or some other symbol.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this meeting will be dealing with the specifics of individual justice,\u201d IOC vice president John Coates told The Associated Press on Monday. \u201cThe meeting will discuss some guidelines as to how people might apply for individual justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also unclear is the terms of participation by Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova. The 800-meter runner, who served a two-year ban for blood doping before helping expose cheating in Russia, was given IAAF dispensation to apply to compete as an independent athlete for her \u201cextraordinary contribution to the fight against doping.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unlikely the IOC would allow an admitted doper to compete under the Olympic flag, so another solution would have to be found.<\/p>\n

The IAAF\u2019s ban on the Russian athletes could be appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, based on the argument that it\u2019s unfair to collectively punish the whole team for the violations of some athletes.<\/p>\n

The IAAF task force which examined Russia\u2019s status made clear that the entire drug-testing system in the country\u2019s track and field program had been tainted by cheating, including with help of the sports ministry. There is no way to prove that any athletes are clean, it said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn short this is the price that has to be paid for the failure of the Russian authorities to fix the problem before now, and the Russian authorities alone are to blame for that,\u201d said the panel, headed by Norwegian anti-doping expert Rune Andersen.<\/p>\n

Among those attending Tuesday\u2019s meeting will be IAAF President Sebastian Coe and Russian Olympic Committee chief Alexander Zhukov, who has expressed hope that the Russians could still find a way back in.<\/p>\n

Also invited are the four IOC vice presidents, U.S. Olympic Committee chair Larry Probst and representatives of international federations and national Olympic bodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LAUSANNE, Switzerland \u2014 With a ban on Russia\u2019s track and field athletes already in place, Olympic leaders are looking at further anti-doping measures ahead of the Rio de Janeiro Games. The status of other sports<\/a> in Russia, as well as other countries and sports with poor doping records, could come under scrutiny at an Olympic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-23409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23409\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23409"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=23409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}