Staff Reporter.
World Athletics has voted to end its eight-year ban of the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) but the country’s athletes, and those of Belarus, will remain excluded from international competition because of WA’s ongoing separate ban over the invasion of Ukraine.
RusAF was banned in 2015 after the discovery of massive, state-sponsored doping and related cover-ups. A failure to meaningfully address the issue meant that the suspension remained in place.
However, Rune Andersen, head of WA’s Russia Task Force, reported that he was finally satisfied with the “new culture of good governance and zero tolerance for doping throughout the organisation” and WA’s Council subsequently voted on Thursday to lift the ban.
In recent years dozens of Russian athletes had been allowed to compete as neutrals if they could show a doping-free background but they too remain unable to compete after the Council voted to maintain the blanket ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes that came into force soon after the invasion of Ukraine a year ago.
This decision follows that last week by the European Athletics Council that Russian and Belarusian athletes should remain banned from its events until the war in Ukraine is ended.