“As the report said it involved 20 summer Olympic sports, this system of cover ups, so yes there will be athletes who have used doping from Russian Federation in Rio”.
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Instead, the International Olympic Committee said it would be up to individual sports federations to decide which athletes were eligible for Rio – but that anyone who had been sanctioned for doping should not be able to go.
The federation’s president, Romanian-born former competitor and coach Marius Vizer, denied there was a conflict of interest and said neither Putin’s nor Rotenberg’s roles played any part in its decision to allow Russians to compete. They were the first Olympic judo gold medals the country had ever won. For the Russian rowers entered for Rio, 547 blood and urine tests were conducted since 2011.
The five include 2012 bronze medalist Alexei Korovashkov.
ICF secretary general Simon Toulson said: “This is a bitter blow for the Olympic movement and we are saddened that our sport is implicated”.
But the Games As We Know Them are now filled with wide-scale, unapologetic drug cheating, as was documented in a pair of independent reports that gave an unflinching look at a top-to-bottom doping program involving Russia’s government and trickling down to hundreds of the country’s athletes.
“In my view, that’s an unfair decision to whistleblowers because what International Olympic Committee lacked to understand, if Yuliya never started to do whistleblowing, most likely none of this would be happening”, he said.
The ICF had been expected to crack down hard having issued one-year bans to the Romania and Belarus teams earlier this month for repeated doping violations. The Russians are expected to field another strong team in Rio, led by two-time world champion Abdulrashid Sadulaev. The Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) challenged this ban by appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
The rowing organization had said on Monday three other Russian rowers that did not meet conditions to compete in Rio.
The equestrian disciplines of eventing, showjumping and dressage were not mentioned in the report, but modern pentathlon was. Latvian athlete Ruslan Nakonechny replaces Kustov in the men’s event. The three remaining members of Russia’s team, including top-ranked Alexander Lesun, have been cleared to compete.
Five sprint canoeists and two modern pentathletes are the latest to be cut from the Russian team while it is likely more of the nation’s athletes will be added to the Olympic no-go list in the coming days.
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This has been criticised due to the close proximity of Rio 2016, with the Opening Ceremony scheduled to take place on August 5. Despite being given clearance by the International Associations of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to compete as a neutral athlete. This latest case of state sponsored doping, coming on the heels of revelations of financial malpractice in the global soccer federation (FIFA) and the construction companies that built the Rio sports facilities, and ongoing worldwide outrage about the conditions of work in Qatar for labourers involved in the construction of the stadia and hotels for the 2022 World Cup of soccer – all of these and more can only help to oblige sports federations to become more accountable and transparent.
