Russia replies as IAAF consider doping sanctions
Vladimir Put / Russian President |
Moscow (AFP) - Russia sent a
formal reply to damaging allegations of "state-sponsored" doping to
world athletics' governing body on Thursday as the IAAF prepared to
consider suspending the track and field superpower.
"We have just
sent our account to the IAAF," the acting president of Russia's
athletics federation Vadim Zelichenok told TASS news agency.
Russian
athletics was placed firmly in the doping dock and risked exclusion
from next year's Rio Olympics after the explosive accusations contained
in Monday's World Anti-Doping Agency report which rocked the Olympic's
flagship sport.
Russia's
immediate fate on the international stage is to be determined by
athletics chief Sebastian Coe and the 27-strong IAAF council in a
video-conference call meeting starting at 1800GMT on Friday.
Zelichenok
told the R-Sports agency that Russia's athletics authorities had
produced the response "in such a way as to try to prove our innocence".
"How many pages is it? One or 100, it's not important," he added.
In another development,
Russia's Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov flew into Lausanne
in Switzerland Thursday evening for talks with International Olympic
Committee chief Thomas Bach, R-Sport reported.
And
the country's second-largest bank, VTB, announced it would not renew a
sponsorship contract with the IAAF, but insisted the decision had
nothing to do with the doping scandal.
The
fallout from the report's damning conclusions reached as far up the
ladder as Russian President Vladimir Putin, who held crisis talks in the
Black Sea resort of Sochi late Wednesday.
Putin
ordered Russian officials to launch their own internal investigation
and cooperate with international anti-doping authorities.
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