London, April 21

Russian athletics has been given a longer than expected period to prove it has made enough progress in reforming its anti-doping operation to be re-instated to the sport in time to take part in the Rio Olympics.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced on Thursday, when the Russian situation will be discussed and almost certainly decided, will take place in Vienna.

After the last Council meeting in March, IAAF president Sebastian Coe said he expected it to be in May.

Russia, second behind the United States in the athletics medal table at the 2012 London Olympics, is banned from all athletics after an independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed widespread state-sponsored doping.

The country now has to convince the IAAF that it has put in place measures to show improvement in its anti-doping operation and a “change of culture.”

Mikhail Butov told Reuters on Thursday: “We were expecting this, now we will continue to work together with the IAAF working group.”

Last month Norwegian Rune Andersen, who heads the five-person international task force reviewing Russia’s reforms after its suspension from global competition in November, said there had been “significant progress”, including changing its president and council and developing anti-doping educational programmes.

The Rio athletics program begins on August 12 but registration must be completed about a month before that which would leave little time for the vast majority of Russian athletes who would still need to record Olympic-standard qualifying times.