MOSCOW, Russian Federation. Vladimir Putin’s spokesman has said accusations of state-sponsored doping in Russia appear unfounded. Dmitry Peskov said that when charges were made, they must be based on some evidence.
He said: “As long as there is no evidence, it is difficult to consider the accusations, which appear rather unfounded.”
When asked for the Kremlin’s opinion about the cause of the charges against Russian athletes, he responded: “It’s none of our business to ponder over the causes of such scandals.”
At the same time the UK Athletics chairman, Ed Warner, called for Russia to be banned from international competition and stripped of hosting next year’s IAAF World Junior Championships in Kazan in the wake of the Wada report on doping allegations.
“I am all for suspension until the systems in Russia are proved to be robust,” Warner said. “The IAAF is meeting later this week to consider suspending Russia and my strong advice would be that you have got to do that.
“If you suspend the Russian athletics federation you then have to remove the world junior championships – cancel them and take them elsewhere.
“The worst thing would be for Russia to turn up at the world indoor championships in Oregon in March or to host the juniors and we find out that nothing has changed.”
The head of the Russian track and field federation called on the IAAF to allow his athletes to compete at the Olympics. The acting federation president, Vadim Zelichenok, said: “We hope for prudence from the IAAF commission.” He added the accusations of doping were part of a conspiracy.
Peskov told Tass that Putin will hold some Olympic-related events this week involving the Russian sports minister, Vitaly Mutko.
He dismissed as inappropriate a question from reporters on whether Russia’s president had concerns about the sports minister. “Mutko is the incumbent minister, so I do not understand your question,” he said.
In the 325-page report, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, Russia was accused of operating a huge state-sponsored doping programme that sabotaged the London 2012 Olympics.
The review by an independent commission chaired by Dick Pound, a former Wada president, uncovered a “deeply rooted culture of cheating” and recommended Russia be suspended from competition and barred from the Olympic Games in Rio next year unless it entirely overhauls its approach.
Mutko, Pound said, was “complicit” in a programme that could only have happened with the “knowledge and consent” of state authorities.
Mutko, in an interview aired on Russian television, denied wrongdoing and said the Wada commission’s report relied on “unverified sources, on unverified facts”. He added: “These are all conjectures.”
Wada on Tuesday suspended the accreditation of the Mosocw drug-testing laboratory at the centre of the programme, its only accredited laboratory in Russia.
It had found that the head of the lab, Grigory Rodchenko, admitted to intentionally destroying 1,417 samples in December 2014 shortly before Wada officials were due to visit.
The International Association of Athletics Federations, where senior officials including the former president Lamine Diack were last week arrested by French prosecutors, also came in for heavy criticism from Wada as the report found “corruption and bribery practices at the highest levels of international athletics”.
Credit: Guardian (UK)
