Russian track and field athletes have received a major blow, as they will not be allowed to compete in the upcoming Rio Olympics, with the official world governing body for track and field events, IAAF, announcing the ban on Friday.
"I can confirm that the suspension remains in force and will refrain from all other commentaries," TASS quoted All-Russia Athletics Federation Secretary General Mikhail Butov as saying.
Russia has been bagging headlines ever since it was found that the nation was running a government-sponsored doping programme, embarrassing the sports fraternity around the world. It was the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that had initially made the allegations against Russia.
As a result of this, Russian athletes have for the past seven months been barred from international competitions, and the powerful body has decided not to lift the suspension. The IAAF took this stance as they felt Russia had not done enough to convince it to remove the ban.
When the IOC meets next week, they could set some guidelines as to how athletes can protest regarding the ban.
"The debate next Tuesday will be on the issue of individual justice and rights," the Daily Mail quoted IOC Vice-President John Coates as saying.
"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," he said.
"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 a regular basis."
