The International Olympic Committee has established a three-person panel to have final say on which Russian athletes get to compete in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
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“This panel will decide whether to accept or reject that final proposal”, International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said.
But the International Olympic Committee set strict criteria – including a ban of all Russian athletes sanctioned for using performance enhancing drugs in the past.
The Australian gymnastics team are awaiting a decision by the global federation (FIG) on Russian athletes to see if they will replace them, while the women’s eight rowing crew has been handed a berth in place of a banned Russian team.
A separate doping report a year ago led to the entire Russian-based track and field team being barred from Rio.
RIO DE JANEIRO With Russia caught in the grip of a doping scandal, just getting to the Rio Olympics was a victory of sorts for the country’s table tennis players Polina Mikhailova, Maria Dolgikh and Alexander Shibaev.
Team GB will have two weightlifters in Rio, 17-year-old Rebekah Tiler and Sonny Webster, and the latter insisted on Friday that anyone who has tested positive in the past should not be allowed to compete at the Olympics.
And the powerful sports federations themselves are gangrenous with dirty money: The second installment of that same WADA report revealed that the president of the global track federation (the International Association of Athletics Federation, or IAAF) took more than a million Euros in bribes to mask the Russian scam.
Nikita Lobintsev took a silver medal in the 4×200 m freestyle relay at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and a bronze medal in the 4×100-meter freestyle relay at the 2012 Olympics in London.
On Monday, swimming’s world governing body FINA banned both, along with their Russian compatriot Daria Ustinova, because their names appeared in Canadian law professor Richard McLaren’s damning report.
“The same as any Olympic Games, we expect in the first days to see if something needs to be done”, he said.
The Russian sports minister said 272 of the original 387 athletes selected to compete had been cleared to go to the games, which start 5 August.
The IWF said the ban also applied to Russia’s technical official for the Rio Games, whose appointment was withdrawn.
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The IOC opens a two-day meeting of its ruling executive board on Saturday, its last formal gathering before next Friday’s opening ceremony at the Maracana Stadium.
