That would mark the deepest crisis in the Olympic movement since the US 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.
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The International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) executive board will meet on Sunday in Lausanne, where the World Anti-Doping Agency’s recommendation to ban Russian Federation from Rio will be discussed.
Meanwhile, the federations of the Olympic and Paralympic sports affected by Russia’s rampant cheating over the last few years are now discussing their options and it is understood that some were waiting for CAS to rubber-stamp the IAAF stance before following suit with their own vetting of individual Russian athletes.
Announcing what it calls a unanimous decision, the CAS said it had rejected both a request for arbitration filed by the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 athletes, along with an appeal that was filed by 67 of the same athletes who had been declared ineligible for the Olympic Games in Rio when their country’s sporting federation was suspended.
“Now let all these foreign pseudo-clean sportspeople sigh with relief and win their pseudo-gold medals in our absence”, Isinbayeva wrote on Instagram. “They’ve always been frightened of strength”.
The CAS ruling backed up a decision from athletics governing body the IAAF to slap a blanket ban on Russia’s track and field team ahead of the Olympics over evidence of state-sponsored doping.
It was maintained in June after the IAAF Council ruled that not enough progress had been made in transforming Russia’s anti-doping programme.
Usually so confident on the track, Bolt was initially wary about discussing the “sideshows” of Olympic bans, but the Jamaican sprinter found his stride at a news conference in London.
The IAAF ban covers all worldwide competition and follows an investigation by the World Anti-Doping Agency past year which found widespread “state-sponsored” doping. CAS general secretary Matthieu Reeb said the Russians have the right to appeal to the Swiss federal tribunal within 30 days, but only on “procedural grounds”, not the merits of the decision.
The ball is now in the court of the International Olympic Committee to decide whether Russian Federation should be excluded from all sports at the Rio Games, starting on August 5.
The World Anti-Doping Agency had begun investigating suspicions of Russian doping at the time.
” The Kremlin expressed “deep regret” over the decision and said it had “no legal basis”.
“I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing”, he said. It is our federation’s instinctive desire to include, not exclude.
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Whether it will persuade the International Olympic Committee to make such actions academic by banning the entire Russian delegation is another matter, as all indications suggest International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach remains reluctant to take such a drastic and unprecedented step. “I’m good, I’m feeling good, been training good now”, Bolt said. “What a paradox”, Litvinov said.
