World Athletics puts ANA process on hold after RusAF misses fine payment deadline

PARIS - The process of allowing Russian athletes to return to competition will be put on hold after the country's athletics federation failed to pay its fine for breaching anti-doping rules, World Athletics said in a statement on Thursday.

The Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) was due to pay a fine of five million US dollars for breaching the sport's anti-doping rules, and an extra fee of 1.31 million to cover the relevant investigation and legal costs by July 1.

But World Athletics said it has not received the payments, nor any information on when the money will be paid, despite reminders and correspondence with the RusAF.

"As a result, World Athletics will stand down both the Doping Review Board (DRB) and the Russian Taskforce until World Athletics' Council has reviewed and discussed the situation at their meeting on 29-30 July," the global governing body of the sport said in the statement.

According to World Athletics, the Russian Taskforce and the DRB have moved forward in a number of areas, such as opening up the Authorized Neutral Athlete (ANA) process to facilitate the granting of ANA status for athletes from Russia to return to competition. But these processes will be put on hold until the Council meets at the end of July "to ensure World Athletics is not incurring additional costs that may not be reimbursed".

"We recognize these are difficult times, but we are very disappointed by the lack of progress made by RusAF in terms of the requirements set in March," said Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics.

"The serious allegations of breaching the anti-doping rules resulted in a new RusAF administration and we had assurances and hoped that change was on its way."

"RusAF is letting its athletes down badly. The terms of payment of the fine and costs were clear and unchallenged by RusAF at the time so this issue will now need to return to Council at the end of July," Coe added.