He told the Interfax news agency he was hoping for a “reasonable” decision from the International Olympic Committee on Russia’s participation in Rio.
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“Because of the detailed references to the manipulation of samples during the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014 the IOC asks all International Olympic Winter Sports Federations to freeze their preparations for major events in Russia”, it said.
A final decision would also depend on the WADA code and the Olympic Charter, the IOC said, giving an indication of the legal battle ahead.
“The issue will be finally resolved by the end of this week, probably on Sunday”, Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov said on Wednesday at an ROC meeting, according to the Associated Press.
Russian track and field athletes who maintain they are not guilty of wrongdoing will learn on Thursday if they have been successful with an appeal against the IAAF ban and the International Olympic Committee said that verdict would be taken into consideration with regards to a potential ban on all athletes from the country competing in Brazil. The IOC will take that ruling into account before making its own decision. The Olympics are supposed to be about fair sports and comradery and competing and when you have a country that has had so many violations against doping, you do need to take a hard stand against it. And quite honestly, for me anyway, my trust for the Russian athletes in track and field has been broken.
Right now though, the one responsible for Team Russia is thinking of sending a team 387 strong- including 68 track athletes. “It would be, I’d say, a serious precedent for the other federations’ decisions”. Zhukov said he was hopeful of winning the appeal, adding that Russia’s plans for the Olympics assumed the track and field team would be allowed to compete. “Boycotts lead only to the collapse of the Olympic movement”.
The Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, retaliating for the United States-led boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
It is known that the WADA report, which accused Moscow of creating a special mechanism for substitution of doping samples of athletes at the Olympic Games in Sochi, became the reason for discussion.
The IOC executive board held a meeting by teleconference on Tuesday to consider its steps in the wake of the McLaren report, which found that 28 summer and winter Olympic sports were affected by state-operated cheating in Russian Federation.
While the Russian athletics team is banned from Rio, the fate of the rest of Russia’s Olympic team still hangs in the balance.
The IOC said on Tuesday it had started disciplinary action against officials mentioned in the report and that anyone implicated would not be given accreditation for Rio.
Another ARD programme claims that Russian authorities have been covering up for coaches disgraced by the doping programme, directly pinpointing Mutko for his alleged involvement in the cover-up.
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The IOC has already banned Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko and all other ministry officials from the Rio Games and withdrawn backing for global events in Russia over the doping programme revealed by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren this week.
