The Olympic Channel will inspire us all and reach out to new generations of athletes and fans. “We can not and will not accept what in fact is pure discrimination”.
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Given the questions raised by investigations in recent months, the decision to allow 11 Russians to compete in the Games will lead to much debate.
“All the athletes who will go to Rio or are already there won’t be broken”, she said, adding that Russians would compete in Rio “to spite everyone” and “rattle the world” with their performances.
“It is now time to put all doubts aside: the Russian team is going to the Olympics”.
Isinbayeva watched from the sidelines, vowing defiance and legal action.
The IOC say “Olympic-related terms” include the words “Rio”, “gold”, “silver”, “bronze”, “medal” and even “victory”. “People have tried to break us down, but it’s never worked”.
“My conscience is clean”, said long jumper Vasily Kopeikin, another athlete barred from Rio.
While no names were mentioned, those riders are believed to be men’s team pursuit squad member Sergey Shilov, Olga Zabelinskaya, who won bronze in the road race and time trial at London 2012, and Katusha rider Ilnur Zakarin, victor of a stage in this year’s Tour de France.
Kopeikin added that he would not watch any Olympic events in which Russian Federation was not taking part.
The IOC sparked fierce criticism on Sunday when it resisted a blanket ban on the country in favour of allowing individual sports federations to make the call on which Russians can go to Rio.
As the athletes walked across Red Square to meet Putin, some posed for selfies with Vitaly Mutko, whose sports ministry was accused by the World Anti-Doping Agency of orchestrating the doping cover-up.
Some federations have taken a tough line, excluding many Russian team members from events such as rowing, canoeing and swimming.
Some Russian athletes had flown to Rio in advance of the main delegation, including gymnasts and swimmers.
A UCI press release has given further details of the Russian cyclists implicated in the McLaren Investigation Report, published last Monday. The entire lifting team risks being banned from the Rio Games because of the large number of failures in retests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. In a clear sign of coordination, it was set up within hours under Vitaly Smirnov, a former Soviet sports minister and International Olympic Committee member.
Like every other federation in the summer Olympic programme, the UWW has been assessing each Russian athlete’s record in the wake of the devastating report into state-sponsored doping by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren.
Explaining Rule 40, US Olympic Committee chief marketing officer Lisa Baird said: “Commercial entities may not post about the Games on their corporate social media accounts”.
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But WADA officials have argued that the evidence of a systemic Russian government-sponsored doping program, along with efforts by Russian state officials to cover up doping violations by Russian athletes, should have been dealt with by imposing a blanket ban against all Russian athletes during the 2016 Olympics.
