Yulia Efimova is one of four Russian swimmers banned from the Olympic Games.
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WEIGHTLIFTING – The International Weightlifting Federation said it would evaluate the evidence against Russian athletes once received.
Russian entries to the Olympics must still be examined and upheld by an expert from the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Worldwide sport has faced a ideal storm of issues in the last few years – financial corruption, doping, match fixing, athlete health and safety, judging scandals, the harassment and abuse of athletes, etc. Steps are finally being taken to bring the principles of good governance to the unregulated world of global sport.
Effectively, the rowers have been blocked because they have not been tested enough times out of Russian Federation.
“There will be athletes who have used doping from Russian Federation in Rio”, Vitaly Stepanov told BBC Sport.
Earlier in the week Mutko sent a letter to IAAF President Sebastian Coe asking him to allow Russia’s doping-clean field and track athletes to take part in the upcoming Olympics.
Fencing’s world governing body the FIE said it had “re-examined the results” of the drug tests taken by the 16-strong Russian team over the last two years and all were negative. But other sports have been excluding athletes on a case-by-case basis.
Four of the Russian boats will be withdrawn from participating, so teams from two more teams from Italy, one from Australia and another from Greece will replace them.
The decision was discriminatory, amounted to a political campaign waged against Russian sportspeople and devalued any medals won in their absence, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin said.
“None of the six Russian triathletes (three men, three women) that have qualified for 2016 Olympics are included in the McLaren report, nor have any of them served suspensions or bans for failed doping tests”, the ITU said in a statement. Worldwide sports federations, aside from the IAAF, have since Sunday been vetting Russian competitors’ suitability for Rio after a damning report last week revealed rampant state-run doping across Russian sport.
Also, Russia also looks set to field a full team of four players in Olympic badminton, the Russian Badminton Federation said Tuesday, citing assurances from the Badminton World Federation. Latvian athlete Ruslan Nakonechny replaces Kustov in the men’s event.
Asked about countries including Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asian states, WADA spokeswoman Maggie Durand told The Associated Press by email that “there is a need to increase testing capacity in all of these regions and we are working with these countries to ensure more testing is occurring”.
“I will root for the entire national team since the recent antagonism has banded us all together”, the two-time Olympic champion, who has been barred from the 2016 Rio Olympics by the world athletics body IAAF’s decision, added.
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Several International Federations, including those representing swimming, canoeing, rowing, sailing and modern pentathlon, have already confirmed the exclusion of a number of Russian athletes.
