The report of the independent commission of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) chaired by Canadian sports law professor Richard McLaren, is being scrutinised by the Russian Investigative Committee (IC), Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Friday.
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Russia’s Sports Minister says 272 of the country’s athletes have received approval from global sports federations to compete at the Rio Olympics under new restrictions imposed due to the Russian doping scandal. “But suddenly we were confronted with the problem that this could not be considered as global testing”, Mutko said, citing the testing criteria established by the IOC for each athletes’ participation in Rio. The eight Russian Olympic spots have been offered to other countries.
The decision has been made less than 10 days before the weightlifting commences in Rio and the IWF insist they adopted their strong stance following a series of suspicious test results which emerged from the previous two Games.
Russia’s weightlifting team has also been barred from Rio, the sport’s governing federation confirmed on Friday evening.
Anatoly Terekhov, the head of the Russian Taekwondo Union, said that all the athletes of the Russian taekwondo team have been sanctioned by the World Taekwondo Federation to enter the Olympics.
“They’re training and they’re ready to go”.
“Unfortunately they didn’t make an exception for me”, she wrote on Instagram.
The 31st Summer Olympic Games will be held in Rio de Janeiro from August 5 through 21.
Says Isinbayeva: “The miracle didn’t happen”.
The McLaren report found that the Moscow laboratory at the centre of Russia’s state-sponsored doping programme hid 117 positive weightlifting tests over a four-year period – a figure second only to track and field.
As reported by Lilufa Uddin and Amy Walker of the Guardian, the vast majority of Russia’s athletics and rowing teams have already been banned from competing, as well as numerous athletes in other events.
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Kuznetsov claimed that banning the athletes from the Games is illegal, because they are not involved in doping cases.
