UK ATHLETICS chairman Ed Warner has backed the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) decision to uphold the IAAF’s strict blanket ban of Russian athletes for the Rio Olympics and praised the sport’s international federation for maintaining a strong stance.
Sixty-eight Russian athletes with the support of the Russian Olympic Committee filed appeals to CAS in order to overturn the country’s track and field ban but were last week turned down.
MARK SHEARMAN
“It’s absolutely the right decision,” Warner (pictured left) told AW. “The IAAF Council should be applauded for the decision it took last November.”
Speaking prior to the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) decision not to issue the entirety of the Russian Olympic contingent with a ban after a report by lawyer Richard McLaren World Anti-Doping Agency alleged a government-orchestrated doping cover-up scheme had been operation across almost all sports, Warner said that he doubted that the IOC would take such a strong stance, though made it clear, as he has done in the past, that he supported the notion of a full-scale exclusion.