Russia's athletics federation still has a long road to navigate if it is to overturn its ban after the head of the IAAF's Task Force reported on Monday that several criteria for reinstatement remained unmet.
Nineteen Russians will compete as neutrals at the World Athletics Championships, which begin in London on Friday, but the rest, just as they did for last year's Rio Olympics, will be watching from home as their federation remains suspended.
"Our impression is that they really want to meet all the criteria, they have shown huge progress since November 2015, but there are still issues to BE resolved," Rune Andersen, the Task Force head, told reporters following his presentation to the IAAF Council.
"The main issue is that no meaningful (drugs) testing is being conducted. They have started but where they used to do 19,000 a year it's now just a few thousand and RUSADA (Russia's anti-doping agency) remains not code-compliant."
Andersen said he had noticed an encouraging change in culture "starting with the athletes" but added that there was still an issue with banned coaches continuing to operate freely, particularly in race walking, a discipline where Russia has had a terrible doping record in recent years.
The earliest possible return for Russia was November but in the light of the Task Force's concerns that looks extremely unlikely.
IAAF president Sebastian Coe said the world body's system of clearing individual Russian athletes to compete was working.
"We find the clean athletes and separate them from the tainted system," he said.
Coe said the biggest problem his sport currently faced was not doping but engagement, particularly with the younger generation.
His biggest draw, Usain Bolt, will be appearing for the last time in London and Coe recognised that filling that void would be an enormous, and probably impossible, challenge.
"Usain Bolt is a genius; other than Muhammad Ali I can't think of anybody who has had such an impact on his sport inside or outside," Coe said of the Jamaican.
"He's the greatest sprinter of all time but what we are going to miss more is the personality. We want athletes with personalities, it's nice to have someone who has a view and fills a room and fills a stadium."
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