The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Wednesday extended provisional sanctions imposed on Russia over allegations of systematic anti-doping violations until further notice.
An IOC executive board meeting in Lausanne, Switzerland, agreed to extend the sanctions, which were first announced on July 19 and which were due to expire at the end of the year.
Sanctions include the IOC not organizing or giving patronage to any sports event or meeting in Russia and calling on international Olympic Winter sports federations to freeze their preparations for major events in Russia.
The IOC stressed that international sports federations also have the right to ban Russian athletes, officials and coaches or the whole federation.
The IOC sanctions did not however include a total ban on Russian athletes participating at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.
The IOC imposed sanctions after the first report on Russian doping by World Anti-Doping Agency chief investigator Richard McLaren was published ahead of the Rio games. McLaren publishes the second part of his report in London on Friday.
The IOC emphasized that McLaren's findings must be reviewed and all athletes, the Russian Ministry of Sport and others involved have a right to a hearing before any disqualification of athletes from the Olympic Games takes place.
The IOC news came on the same day that Russia announced double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva will chair a nine-person supervisory board of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA).
"We are all well aware the fight against doping is the key issue today ... and the effectiveness of this fight in Russia will depend on how soon RUSADA is reinstated," Isinbayeva said in a statement.
RUSADA was suspended a year ago by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
The 34-year-old Isinbayeva was elected to the IOC's athletes' commission in August and is the favourite to be chosen as the president of Russia's athletics federation on Friday.
Russia is the subject of two commissions in the IOC. One investigative commission is looking into allegations of Russian state-run doping during the Sochi Olympics while a disciplinary commission is trying to find out if and how doping samples from Russian athletes were manipulated in Sochi.
By Martin Romanczyk
