But the man standing in front of Tallent wasn't carrying the 2012 Olympic Games gold medal that will be his in a matter of weeks.

Instead, Tallent was targeted for a random and rare IAAF drug test and the irony wasn't lost on the 31-year-old as he prepares to be elevated to Olympic champion.

Tallent slammed the IAAF for its role in covering up Russian drug cheats and robbing home of a gold-medal moment three years ago, or 1185 days to be precise, when Sergey Kirdyapkin beat him in the 50 kilometre event in London.

Of all the days and athletes at the AIS, drug-testers picked Tallent as the man to target on a day that has seen his world turned upside down by a stunning World Anti-Doping Agency's independent commission report into doping, corruptions and criminal behaviour in Russian athletics.

Tallent is expected to become the retrospective Olympic champion in the coming weeks after WADA's report detailed bribes paid to officials to allow Russian athletes, including Kidyapkin to compete.

It vindicated Tallent's long-held suspicion, but after finally reading through the report at 4am, the last person he expected to see was a drug tester two hours later.

"It was just bizarre. On this day of all days ... I get tested by ASADA every three weeks. I don't get tested by the IAAF much, maybe two or three times a year. So I was surprised to see them," Tallent said.

Tallent is back in Canberra for a nutrition camp at the AIS as he searches for a "clean edge" to his training in preparation for the Olympics.

He had suspicions as far back as the 2008 Games in Beijing, where he won silver in the 50 kilometre and bronze in the 20 kilometre events, that Russian race-walkers were cheating.

"[Russian athletes] chose to go down those dark and murky paths... in 2008 it was stinking hot and the AIS worked a lot with me to do pre-cooling and ice vests," Tallent said.

"In the stifling heat, the Russians were warming up in tracksuits and totally cooking themselves. I guess they had enough drugs in their system to still go on and win."

Tallent won the silver medal in the 50 kilometre Olympic race in London in 2012, finishing behind Russian drug cheat Kirdyapkin.

Tallent has counted the days since that moment and says being denied the chance to stand at the top of the podium and the benefits that come with being an Olympic gold-medal winner are fuelling his desire for revenge at Rio next year.

"This is making me pretty motivated. A retrospective medal is good, but it's not the same on the day. I've missed the feeling you get when your cross the line first and standing on the podium. That's all gone," Tallent said.

"It will never be the same. But it's driving me to go further. A lot of people in the sport have been ripped off ... I never considered quitting. But some days out there training, it was hard to get through sessions. You wondered what it was all worth."

The WADA report called on the IAAF to suspend the Russian Athletics Federation from all events including the 2016 Olympic Games.

"The IAAF has been weak. They need to harden up and make the tough call. This is a very dark day for the sport, the public trust is probably all lost. It's going to take forever to build that back and it's going to be tough for the sport to be credible again," Tallent said.

Kirdyapin was a banned drug cheat before the London Olympics and was banned after the Games, but IAAF officials allowed him to compete and win the gold medal in the 50-kilometre event.

Russia has already has six race-walkers test positive to banned performance enhancing drugs this year.

"The only way to make Russia stop is to ban them," Tallent said.

"Every clean athlete will benefit from that ... we'd like to see that happen in Rio. It shouldn't have taken this long, but I'm much happier now."