The governing body of world athletics has suspended five Russian race walkers from competition pending further investigation of their participation in a training camp with a banned coach.
The decision to revoke the neutral status of Klavdiya Afanasyeva, Olga Eliseeva, Yuliya Lipanova, Sergey Sharypov and Sergey Shirobokov, who won silver at the 2017 world championships, means they will not be eligible to compete at this week’s race walking team championships in China, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) said in a statement on Friday.
The IAAF said the decision had been made pending a probe into “a number of serious issues” related to their participation in a training camp in Kyrgyzstan last month with coach Viktor Chegin, who was banned for life from athletics over the Russian doping scandal.
Russia’s athletics federation was suspended by the IAAF in 2015 following a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report containing allegations of state-supported doping, which Moscow has denied.
The IAAF has cleared some Russians to compete internationally as neutral athletes if they demonstrate that their training environment meets the required anti-doping standards.
The IAAF said it would review the race walkers’ status for further competitions this year once it had received more information from Russia’s anti-doping agency RUSADA and knew the outcome of further investigations.
