Paris (AFP)

Games without Russian athletes? Already deprived by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) of any international sports competition for four years, Russia is now under threat of ousting the International Athletics Federation with the risk of seeing its representatives completely excluded from the Olympic Games. Tokyo.

Suspended since November 2015 for a vast scandal of institutional doping, Russia sees its situation further complicated with the recommendation of the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) to ban it from World Athletics (ex-IAAF).

To make matters worse, the IAU also requested that the process be frozen, allowing Russian athletes judged to be beyond reproach by an anti-doping panel to compete under neutral banners at international competitions, making their presence in athletics events in Tokyo uncertain. .

The IAU and World Athletics are thus ready to go even further than WADA, which, while deciding to ban Russia from participating in major international events for four years, notably the 2020 and 2022 Olympic Games and the World Cup soccer world 2022, had planned that handpicked Russian sportsmen could take part in the competitions, but under neutral flag and without the national anthem being played.

Such a mechanism existed in athletics but it was frozen last November after the provisional suspension, on November 21, of five leaders of the Russian Federation (Rusaf), including its then president Dmitri Chliakhtine, suspected of "obstruction of a investigation "targeting high jumper Danil Lysenko. They are accused of having provided false documents to allow the 2017 vice-world champion to escape a penalty for breaches of his localization obligations for unannounced checks.

- "Continuation" -

World Athletics also decided to pause the Rusaf reintegration process.

It is again and always this "Lysenko affair" which means that Russia is this time purely and simply threatened to be ejected from the planet of athletics.

"These recommendations were made by the IAU council after examining the Rusaf response to the indictment issued on November 21, 2019," the independent body said in a statement.

For the IAU, the complaint against the Rusaf "remains intact" because the latter "has had ample opportunity to present any element or evidence which, in its view, meets the arguments of the IAU against it. , in the opinion of the IAU Council, it did not do so. "

The IAU judges this "approach deeply worrying because it seems to indicate that the current direction of the Federation (Yulia Tarasenko replaced in November Mr. Chliakhtine) is only the continuation of the first."

- Pressure -

Responding to the IAU press release, the International Athletics Federation said, however, it was ready to extend its hand one last time to Russia and the new Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin, appointed last week. If the authorities acknowledge the facts, the World Athletics Council will take milder "non-exclusionary" sanctions, propose relaunching the neutral athlete system as well as "a new process for the reinstatement of the 'Russian athletics'.

"If the Rusaf continues to deny the accusations, it will be up to the Arbitral Tribunal for Sport (TAS) to arbitrate the dispute. If the accusations are confirmed, the file will return to the table of the Council of World athletics which will take sanctions", which may so go to the exclusion of Russia, said the International Federation.

The IAU recommendation increases the pressure on the Russian Federation, already strongly criticized by several of its headliners, in particular the triple world champion in high jump Mariya Lasitskene, the 2015 world champion in the 110m hurdles Sergey Shubenkov and reigning world pole vault champion Anzhelika Sidorova.

After writing an open letter in December to demand accountability from their federation, in January they reinvested their Athletes' Commission, previously dormant, in an attempt to weigh in.

Lasitskene also met with the new Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin.

"I want to believe, I want to hope that these changes will help us, will have an influence on the Russian Athletics Federation because we are really in a sorry state," she said. AFP before this interview.

© 2020 AFP