Lausanne (AFP)

The Russian doping file is advancing: the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) which had declared in December the exclusion of Russia from the next Olympic Games in Tokyo-2020 must seize by the weekend the Arbitral Tribunal for Sport (CAS) ) who will confirm or not confirm this decision with serious consequences.

"WADA should seize the CAS by the weekend," an official in the anti-doping body told AFP on Wednesday.

This announcement comes while the entire Olympic movement is gathered in Lausanne for a meeting of the IOC Executive Board which was held on Wednesday morning and the 135th session scheduled for Friday, the day after the opening of the 3rd Olympic Winter Games in Youth organized in Switzerland and in the neighboring French Jura.

On December 10, WADA excluded Russia from international competitions including the Olympic Games, for four years, to punish Moscow for recurring in cheating by falsifying data given to the agency.

At the end of December, the Russian anti-doping agency Rusada announced that it had challenged this exclusion before WADA, which must now seize the CAS, whose decision will be final.

If the CAS, which sits in Lausanne, confirms the exclusion of Russia, this will not prevent Russian sportsmen considered to be "clean" from participating in the next Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games under neutral banner, as was the case during Pyeongchang-2018 Winter Olympics.

On Wednesday, the Olympic government "took stock" of the procedure concerning Russia, said IOC spokesperson Mark Adams.

"We are awaiting a decision (from the CAS) to look into the details" of the participation of Russian sportsmen, he added.

Friday, as at each IOC session, a point of WADA activity "will be drawn up" and "it will be a question of Russia", said the WADA official.

- Weightlifting: "Questions without answers" -

During a rather brief meeting, the IOC government also raised the issue of the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) on Wednesday morning, accused of having, under the leadership of its historic president Tamas Ajan, covered for years doping practices and set up "a culture of corruption", according to an investigation by German television ARD.

"There are still a lot of unanswered questions," said Mr. Adams. "We are waiting for these questions to be dealt with by the various authorities, including WADA," he added, stressing that the IOC "has already intervened" in the past concerning recurrent doping in weightlifting.

Earlier this week, the IOC deemed the charges "very serious and worrying".

Hungarian Ajan, an honorary member of the IOC, planned to attend the IOC session on Friday, the IWF told AFP.

On Wednesday, the Olympic body also specified the dates of the next summer YOG to be held in Dakar from October 22 to November 7, 2022.

The entry into the Youth Games program of two new sports was also validated, namely five-player baseball and wushu, a Chinese martial art, presented as a demonstration sport at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Wushu claims 120 million practitioners worldwide and, according to the IOC, has 39 national federations in Africa for some 3 million practitioners.

© 2020 AFP