Russia Sports News:

Alexandra Trusova, 15, becomes first woman to land three quadruple jumps

Alexandra Trusova established herself as the world’s leading female figure skater … in her first senior international competition.

Trusova, the 15-year-old, two-time world junior champion from Russia, became the first woman to land three quadruple jumps in one international competition program, posting the world’s highest free skate and total scores on the early season.

Trusova previously landed three quads in the free skate at the Russian Federation’s test skates in early September.

She opened Saturday’s free skate with a quadruple Lutz, a quadruple toe loop-triple toe combination and another quad toe to run away from Japanese Olympian Kaori Sakamoto by 44.27 points.

She won a lower-level event in Slovakia with 238.69 points, which would have beaten Japan’s top skater, Rika Kihira, and Olympic bronze medalist Yevgenia Medvedeva by more than 14 points at an event last week in Canada. However, judging panels can be more or less forgiving from event to event.

Still, Trusova established herself as a force going into next month’s Grand Prix season. She will face Kihira and Medvedeva at Skate Canada the last week of October.

IAAF rules to keep in force membership suspension of All-Russia Athletics Federation

MOSCOW, September 23. /TASS/. The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has ruled to keep in force the membership suspension of the All-Russia Athletics Federation (RusAF), Rune Andersen, the head of the IAAF Taskforce Group, said on Monday.

The decision was made at the IAAF Council Meeting in Doha today and it means that Russian track and field athletes will be taking part in the 2019 IAAF World Championship, which is hosted by Qatar between September 27 and October 6, in the status of the Authorized Neutral Athlete (ANA).

Speaking at a news conference after the Council’s meeting, Andersen stated that today’s decision was influenced by a statement from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) regarding suspected inconsistencies in the data retrieved from the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory.

"We are aware of the allegations of manipulation of the data and that an investigation is ongoing," Andersen stated addressing a news conference. "In the light of that TF [Taskforce Group] recommended that RusAF not be reinstated and the IAAF Council unanimously agreed."

WADA announced earlier in the day that it initiated a fast-track probe into the compliance status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) with the Code of the world’s governing anti-doping body based on the reported inconsistencies discovered in the data from the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory. WADA also informed the Russian side that it had a three-week time to provide explanations on the issue.

Andersen also said that Russia has repaid the IAAF all debts, which was one of the requirements for RusAF’s membership reinstatement.

RusAF President Dmitry Shlyakhtin said earlier in the day addressing the IAAF Council that the Russian governing body of track and field athletics had repaid the IAAF a debt of $3.2 million.

The IAAF suspended RusAF’s membership in November 2015, following a wave of anti-doping rules violations and formed a special mission on the issue. The IAAF Taskforce Group, led by Norwegian expert Rune Andersen, was set up to oversee Russia’s implementation of requirements for RusAF’s membership reinstatement with the IAAF.

However, the IAAF permitted clean athletes from Russia to participate in the international tournaments under the neutral status or the Authorized Neutral Athlete (ANA) until the membership of the RusAF was reinstated. The ANA status prohibits Russian athletes from participating under the national flag.

The IAAF Doping Review Board approved on December 18, 2018 an updated version of the Guidance Note for Authorized Neutral Athlete (ANA) status applications and sent the document to the RusAF.

The RusAF started accepting neutral status applications from national track and field athletes on December 19, 2018. The world’s governing athletics body has already granted neutral-status participation permits to 128 Russian track and field athletes.

WADA’s work at Moscow Anti-Doping Lab

Specialists from WADA were granted access to the database of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory in January this year and copied 24 terabytes of information on Russian athletes’ doping samples collected between 2012 and 2015. WADA experts finished their work to retrieve doping samples from the Moscow Lab on April 30 having collected 2,262 doping samples in 4,524 containers (Samples A and B).

The WADA Executive Committee reinstated the compliance status of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA) on September 20, 2018 on condition that WADA experts would be granted access before December 31, 2018 to doping samples at the Moscow Anti-Doping Lab, which was sealed off in connection with a federal investigation.