RUSSIA will be barred from the World Championships in London in August after failing to convince the International Association of Athletics Federations that it is ready to return following allegations of state-sponsored doping.
The IAAF voted unanimously to extend the current ban on the Russian Athletics Federation from senior international competition, although Russians can still apply to compete as individual athletes.
Chairman of the IAAF Taskforce, Rune Andersen, said it was "not recommended" for the ban to be lifted before the Russian anti-doping agency, RUSADA, is fully code-compliant with the World Anti-Doping Agency, which will not happen until November.
Andersen said: "The road map that I outlined . . . clearly states there will be no reinstatement until RUSADA is functioning. And presumably if everything goes to plan there will be a full reinstatement by November 2017.
"This meant Russia as a nation, or RUSAF, is not recommended by us to be reinstated before that time."
The IAAF said that it has currently had applications from 35 individual Russian athletes to compete as international athletes.
The task force made it clear there are still some issues for Russia to address, including adequate sanctioning of banned athletes and a response to the McLaren reports which revealed doping improprieties.
Andersen added: "While acknowledging several positive developments at its recent meetings in Moscow last month... the Taskforce pointed to some negative developments since its last report to Council in December.
"These have included some unhelpful public comments recently made by some Russian sporting officials."
Meanwhile the IAAF also announced a freeze on all new transfers of allegiance, with IAAF president Lord Coe saying rules which effectively allow athletes to switch nationality to the highest bidder are "no longer fit for purpose".
Coe said a working group would be set up to study proposals for new rules relating to changes in nationality, and that the announcement would not affect the 15 applications currently being processed.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here