by Our Sports Desk

RUSSIA is “ready to pass any test” to prove it’s drug-free, Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov told the world’s anti-doping community yesterday, while once again denying there has ever been a “state-sponsored” programme.

The former Olympic fencing champion, who replaced Vitaly Mutko as sports minister in October, was speaking to more than 700 delegates at the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (Wada) annual symposium in Lausanne.

He started his speech by saying the “greatest tragedy” in Russian sport is that clean athletes have been banned from competing by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

The 47-year-old then listed the progress Russia has made in overhauling its anti-doping system since a Wada-funded investigation confirmed media reports of endemic cheating in Russian athletics, which resulted in the Russian athletics federation and anti-doping agency Rusada being suspended and the Moscow anti-doping laboratory shut down in November 2015.

Kolobkov said: “We are ready for inspections and ready to pass all external tests — we don’t object to this.

“We are working on Wada’s criteria and hope to have them accepted in May, and then be fully reinstated in November.”

He explained that doping has been criminalised in Russia, Rusada has been made independent of government and its budget tripled.

An indication of how deep Russia’s problems go, however, arrived shortly after Kolobkov’s speech when the Court of Arbitration for Sport announced a lifetime ban for Dr Sergei Portugalov, a senior Russian sports doctor who is known to have worked across several sports.