British athletes call for Russia to be banned after missing deadline to provide lab data
Russia has missed a December deadline to provide data to the World Anti-Doping Agency after it was reinstated in September.
Wednesday 2 January 2019 22:49, UK
British Olympians are part of a chorus of calls from athletes around the world for Russia to face another ban from international sport.聽
Russia was controversially reinstated by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in September last year.
But that was under the provision that data would be provided for the former Moscow laboratory, which was the nerve centre of one of the biggest doping operations in the history of sport.
However, they missed a 31 December deadline for providing electronic data from the laboratory and groups of athletes are now demanding Russia be suspended once more.
Olympic champion cyclist Callum Skinner is part of the UK Anti-Doping Agency Athlete Committee which wrote to WADA to demand action.
He told Sky News: "WADA is a well-respected organisation but there's been a whole series of secret compromised deals and emails to try and urgently bring the Russian to an end, they're prematurely bringing it to an end.
"We have no lab data, no athlete samples involved so it seem like a rush job trying to sweep something under the rug.
"The governance is taking an unnecessary risk to put RUSADA's (Russian Anti-Doping Agency) interest ahead of global clean athletes and even Russian clean athletes.
"This is bad for sports governance, bad for fair play and bad for athlete welfare."
WADA has referred the issue to its compliance review committee (CRC) which will meet on 14 January before giving its recommendation to WADA's executive committee on how it should deal with the country.
Jo Pavey, the veteran runner who missed out on major medals to Russians later found to have cheated, thinks WADA needs to act decisively to protect its own reputation.
She said: "We've been let down. People have accused WADA of being played by the Russians and letting the Russians get their own way and this has got to stop.
"There's obviously people working hard but things haven't happened the way it should and there's still a lot of work to be done. I think athletes are losing confidence in WADA.''
WADA's own Athlete Committee, including athletes and former athletes from around the world, has demanded its parent organisation suspend Russia as a reaction to the missed deadline.
In a statement they said: "We are extremely disappointed that the 31 December deadline imposed on Russia by WADA has not been adhered to by the Russian authorities.
"We now expect that following the process recommended by the CRC that Russia will be declared non-compliant. Anything less will be considered a failure by WADA to act on behalf of clean athletes."