World Athletics will address Russian doping before Ukraine: Sebastian Coe

• World Athletics won’t consider the subject of Russian athletes competing.
• The IOC is under fire for allowing athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus.
• The IOC has suggested that Russian and Belarusian athletes might compete.

Sebastian Coe said on Friday that World Athletics won’t consider the subject of Russian athletes competing while the conflict in Ukraine rages until it has been determined whether the nation has sufficiently cleaned up its act on doping to be reinstated.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) is under fire for allowing athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus to compete at the Olympics in Paris the following year despite the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.

Due to extensive doping in the nation, the Russian Athletics Federation (RAF) has been prohibited from athletics since 2015; nonetheless, some Russian competitors were permitted to compete at the last two Summer Olympics as neutrals.

When the governing council meets next month to evaluate if the RAF has made enough progress along its “road map” to merit reinstatement, World Athletics President Coe said doping would still take precedence.

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“The Council will discuss the roadmap for reinstatement but specifically around the egregious attack on the integrity of our sport through doping,” Coe told reporters at the world cross-country championships in Bathurst, New South Wales.

“Only on the basis of that conversation or that discussion, would we move on to the second discussion.”

But, Sebastian Coe believed it was doubtful that the general ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes that had been imposed the previous year, which also included a suspension of the right to participate as a neutral, would be lifted.

“The council last February made (a) judgment (on) the situation in Ukraine and the inability of Ukrainian athletes to be competing openly and fairly and with the kind of integrity that we demand in our competitions,” he added.

“It was decided by the council it was inconceivable that Russian athletes (could compete) … So the council will make a decision about whether that position that we decided upon in February still pertains …

“But, as far as I’m concerned, the principles still sit there.”

The IOC has suggested that Russian and Belarusian athletes might compete in Asian qualifying events for the Paris Games. The IOC is desperately trying to prevent the Olympic movement from being split apart by the situation in Ukraine.

Nonetheless, the final say in which athletes can compete in Olympic Games qualifiers and in those events belongs to international federations like World Athletics.

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