World Athletics to rule on Russia ahead of Olympics

World Athletics is to decide Thursday whether to start the procedure of reinstating the new-look Russian athletics federation, as well as initiating the process to allow Russian athletes who test clean to compete under a neutral banner at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Russia has been suspended by World Athletics (then known as the IAAF) since 2015 over repeated doping scandals -- a ban upheld 12 times -- and has been fighting for readmission.

The last report by World Athletics' Task Force, in November, led to its decision-making Council suspending the process of reinstating RUSAF over charges against its officials that they obstructed an anti-doping investigation.

The Council also put a freeze on the system of allowing Russian athletes to compete as "Authorised Neutral Athletes".

Those decisions prompted wholesale change at RUSAF, which has a newly-appointed head in Yevgeny Yurchenko.

In one of his first conciliatory moves in the stand-off, Yurchenko sent two letters to World Athletics, the first "concerning our cooperation and in regard to scandalous situations, which had left an impact on our relations for many years".

Yurchenko said he had agreed with accusations made by the Athletics Integrity Unit (AIU) against RUSAF on the wrongdoings in the case of high jumper Danil Lysenko, in which "forged documents and false explanations" were provided as an alibi to his whereabouts, as required by anti-doping rules.

In January, the AIU, the independent anti-doping watchdog for track and field, recommended World Athletics maintain the exclusion of RUSAF and the freeze on Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag unless it failed to provide evidence in the Lysenko case, which had proved to be a tipping point.

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