IAAF STATEMENT CONCERNING CAS DECISIONS: SIX RUSSIAN ATHLETES

The IAAF is grateful to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) for the decisions it published today upholding the IAAF’s appeals concerning the cases of six international-level Russian athletes: Olga Kaniskina, Yuliya Zaripova, Sergey Bakulin, Valeriy Borchin, Vladimir Kanaykin and Sergey Kirdyapkin.

The IAAF will immediately proceed to the effective disqualification of results, re-rankings and reallocation of medals in all competitions under its control. With respect to the Olympic Games, the IAAF will inform the International Olympic Committee of the CAS decisions and request the disqualification of results and the reallocation of medals.

Summary

All six athletes had initially been charged by the IAAF following abnormalities in their Athlete Biological Passport’s profile. They had all been found guilty of a doping offence and all received an increased period of ineligibility imposed by the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA). However, the IAAF considered that RUSADA had been too “selective” as regards the results to be disqualified retroactively as a consequence of the doping offence revealed by the Athlete Biological Passport and that actually more results should have been disqualified.

The IAAF considered this as an important point of principal in the context of the Athlete Biological Passport and is pleased to see that the CAS Panel has taken the strongest possible line and made a strict and full application of IAAF Rules, in the interest of clean athletes and sport justice.

IAAF APPEALS SIX DECISIONS RECENTLY MADE BY RUSAD

The IAAF confirms having filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration in Lausanne, Switzerland against the decisions rendered by RUSADA in the cases of Valeriy Borchin, Olga Kaniskina, Sergey Bakulin, Sergey Kirdyapkin, Vladimir Kanaykin and Yuliya Zaripova.

All six cases arose from the IAAF Athlete Biological Passport programme launched in 2009 and had been referred to the Russian authorities for adjudication in accordance with IAAF rules.

While the IAAF agrees with RUSADA that there is, in each case, sufficient evidence of an anti-doping rule violation and that there are aggravating circumstances justifying an increased sanction of more than two years, the IAAF disagrees with the selective disqualification of results applied by RUSADA as a consequence of the previous rulings.

The decision with respect to the case of Tatyana Chernova, arising from the re-analysis of her urine sample collected at the World Championships in Berlin in 2009 and kept by the IAAF as part of its retesting strategy, is still under review.

The IAAF will make no further comments pending the CAS proceedings.