Ban on Russian athletes to remain in place, says IAAF

The governing body had been meeting today in Vienna to decide whether Russia had fulfilled the criteria for readmission following its suspension in November, but concluded that they had not been met despite claims to the contrary by Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko.

Mutko had previously apologised for the failure of the country's anti-doping systems to catch cheating athletes without admitting to a state-sponsored campaign, but the IAAF ban has been upheld following today's meeting.

Russia were banned from international competition after the details of state-sponsored doping were released in a 325-page independent report by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

It comes after the agency said this week that officials in Russia were being stopped from testing athletes and had been threatened by security services.

It is expected that those Russian athletes who have not tested positive for banned substances will yet appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport to have the ban lifted, citing that the IAAF cannot ban clean athletes.

The CAS president John Coates, who is also the Australian IOC member, has said he expects Russia's clean athletes to appeal.

"I’m president of Cas, I would think there would be appeal opportunities, I would imagine for someone who can establish their individual integrity. It may be that our meeting next week will set some guidelines for the international federations who again would have the task of deciding if there’s any individual within a federation that they’ve put out who ought to be allowed in, what hurdles that person would need to have to jump.

"My guess is they’d have to establish they were regularly tested outside of Russia by an anti-doping authority and the samples were analysed outside of Russia on an regular basis.”