CAS upheld the “validity” of the IAAF ban, saying a country whose national federation is suspended is ineligible from entering worldwide competitions, including the Olympics.
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Two-time Olympic pole vault champ Yelena Isinbayeva, Russia’s most famous track and field athlete, said she sees “no sense in continuing my training further”, according to her social media translated by Russian media.
The IAAF said it was pleased that CAS had supported its stance.
Sprint king Usain Bolt believes the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) ruling on Russia’s drug cheats will scare athletes and send a strong message that doping won’t be tolerated.
“I wouldn’t fancy them being in the Olympics, that’s just my opinion on it, but I also think there’s a lot of doping problems in a lot of other countries and thinking that the problem starts and ends in Russian Federation is a little bit naïve”, she said at the launch of RTÉ Sport’s Olympic Games coverage.
On Monday, an independent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) commission led by McLaren presented a report in which Russian Federation was accused of having run a state-sponsored doping program.
The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and 68 athletes appealed against that decision but Cas has ruled the ban can stand after hearing evidence. The IOC has scheduled another executive board meeting on Sunday to consider the issue. With the track ban upheld, however, the option remains open.
To receive exceptional eligibility, athletes would have to show an IAAF doping review board that they had been subject to effective anti-doping control systems in other countries and that they had not been tainted by the Russian system.
The Russian athletics federation was banned by the ruling body IAAF a year ago over widespread doping allegations and the ban was extended last month.
Kejval said that, in his opinion, the Russian athletes are victims of the scandal, the responsibility for which rests with the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
That would mark the deepest crisis in the Olympic movement since the United States and Soviet boycotts of the 1980s, and would be a grave blow to a nation that prides itself on its status as a sporting superpower. Olympic bodies and athletes sign up to CAS jurisdiction, and its rulings have very rarely been overturned.
Russia has the potential to appeal the new ruling but Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko stated that the ruling would not be appealed on the day the ruling was announced.
“If they find some way of allowing some of them in and some of them not it puts the International Olympic Committee in a precarious position in terms of its credibility”, Mr Fahey said, adding that the Olympics’ status “as the premier event in world sport” was at stake. The IAAF said it had received 136 applications from Russian athletes earlier this month.
At least two – 800m runner and doping whistleblower Yuliya Stepanova and US-based long jumper Darya Klishina – have gone down that path.
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Mutko said he thought ruling was “political and without legal basis”, but said it created “some precedent” that could affect the IOC’s decision.
