Following a meeting of IAAF executives on Friday night, Russia was overwhelmingly cast out of athletics in concurrence with the findings of a report conducted by the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The culture of doping in Russia was found to be state co-ordinated and wholly systemic with one laboratory reportedly destroying 1,400 urine samples in an effort to protect the cheating athletes.
Can Sebastian Coe get the IAAF out of the gutter? https://t.co/nn9pmgplRh via @IrishTimesSport pic.twitter.com/rTwKdBUmAu
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) November 11, 2015
And according to IAAF President Sebastian Coe, the future of athletics could be in jeopardy unless the practice of taking performance enhancing durgs is completely eliminated. Writing in The Telegraph, Coe says:
'On Friday night, at the end of a three”‘hour conference call, my council colleagues voted almost unanimously to provisionally suspend Russia. The atmosphere was a suffusion of sadness and anger. The recognition that unless we fully grasp the enormity of our plight, there were unlikely to be many tomorrows for athletics.'
Main findings of Wada report on doping and corruption in Russian… https://t.co/g6KlTK0Ovn via @IrishTimesSport pic.twitter.com/xLBNucSKNc
— The Irish Times (@IrishTimes) November 9, 2015
Coe went on to say that implementing this decision against one of the most successful athletic federations was 'the toughest sanction we had.'
But despite his honest intentions to deliver cleanliness to the sport of athletics, not everyone believes Coe is the right candidate to do it. Some believe that his past association with the disgraced Lamine Diack, may compromise his focus to thoroughly tackle the drug issue in sport.
Writing in his Sunday Independent column, Paul Kimmage wrote about a conversation he had with someone about Coe's capacity to take on this job.
#ICYMI @PaulKimmage and @gavreilly talked doping, journalism & religion on @offtheball https://t.co/LOd8HNHzic pic.twitter.com/zuaqJ0Cw8z
— Newstalk Sport (@NewstalkSport) November 8, 2015
The person he spoke to said:
'At the moment, he is sitting there with two agendas: (1) He needs to appear to do as much as possible to address the problem. And (2), because it's his livelihood, he needs to do the least possible damage to the fabric of the sport. And those two ambitions are diametrically opposed!'
It is now at the discretion of the Russian federation, to decide if Russia will participate in the Rio games and some are already considering the possibility of entering as independent athletes. There are also fears that Russian President Vladimir Putin may use political persuasion to ensure a safe passage for Russian athletes into the Olmypics.
