Coe ‘optimistic’ on Russia reinstatement despite extending global ban from athletics

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe said on Thursday he remains 'optimistic' that Russia's global ban from the sport may end soon despite a decision to extend their suspension into a seventh year.

The vote to maintain the suspension, which was first imposed after a WADA investigation in November 2015 revealed a state-sponsored doping programme in the country, was taken at the 53rd congress of the sport's governing body on Wednesday with 126 national federations voting in favour, 18 against and 34 abstaining.

The vote followed a presentation from Rune Andersen, the head of a World Athletics Taskforce supervising Russia's reforms, who wrote in a report that there is a "new culture" at the troubled Russian athletics federation, known as RusAF.

The federation is under new management after former president Dmitry Shlyakhtin and four other officials were banned for obstructing an anti-doping investigation into 2018 world indoor high jump champion Danil Lysenko by presenting fake medical documents.

Russia was hoping to have the ban lifted in 2019 before that case pushed the country back to the brink of being expelled from World Athletics altogether.

RusAF admitted the charges against it and subsequently paid World Athletics a 5 million USD fine plus 1.3 million USD in costs.

Complicating the issue is the fact that Russia's anti-doping agency, RUSADA, is currently banned by world sport until 2022 after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruled last December that it didn't comply with World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules.

World Athletics has allowed a limited number of Russians to compete internationally after a panel examines their history of drug testing. Russia was allowed to send a maximum 10 track and field athletes to compete at the Tokyo Olympics. Mariya Lasitskene won the women's high jump and Anzhelika Sidorova took silver in the pole vault.

IMAGE: AP