The council also voted to cut the maximum amount of plasma testosterone for athletes with Differences in Sex Development (DSD) in half, to 2.5 nanomoles per litre from five.

The tighter rules will impact DSD athletes such as two-times Olympic 800 metre champion Caster Semenya, Christine Mboma, the 2020 Olympic silver medallist in the 200m, and Francine Niyonsaba, who finished runner-up to Semenya in the 800 at the 2016 Olympics.

Russia doping ban lifted but war ban keeps athletes out

World Athletics has voted to end its eight-year ban of the Russian Athletics Federation (RusAF) but the country’s athletes, and those of Belarus, will remain excluded from international competition because of WA’s ongoing separate ban over the invasion of Ukraine.

RusAF was banned in 2015 after the discovery of massive, state-sponsored doping and related cover-ups. A failure to meaningfully address the issue meant that the suspension remained in place.

However, Rune Andersen, head of WA’s Russia Task Force, reported that he was finally satisfied with the “new culture of good governance and zero tolerance for doping throughout the organisation” and WA’s Council subsequently voted on Thursday to lift the ban.

In recent years dozens of Russian athletes had been allowed to compete as neutrals if they could show a doping-free background but they too remain unable to compete after the Council voted to maintain the blanket ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes that came into force soon after the invasion of Ukraine a year ago.

This decision follows that last week by the European Athletics Council that Russian and Belarusian athletes should remain banned from its events until the war in Ukraine is ended.