The IWF says that the multiple cases of doping by Russian weightlifters have “seriously damaged” the integrity of the sport.
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Aside from athletics, where all bar Florida-based Darya Klishina have been banned from competing at Rio, weightlifting is the only other sport to exclude all Russians after each individual governing body was asked to make a call on a sport-by-sport basis. Rejecting calls by more than a dozen anti-doping agencies for a complete ban on Russia, the International Olympic Committee left it to individual sports federations to vet which athletes could compete or not.
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.
Stepanov, who with his 800m runner wife Yuliya Stepanova gave details of the state-run doping programme in Russian Federation, said that despite attempts to clamp down, doping cheats will be in Rio when the Games start on August 5.
Russia’s eight-member weightlifting team was kicked out of the games on Friday for what the worldwide federation called “extremely shocking” doping results that brought the sport into “disrepute”.
“The same as any Olympic Games, we expect in the first days to see if something needs to be done”, he said.
“Every Olympics has these sorts of issues”, said Gibson, referring to the Zika virus outbreak, security concerns and the Russian doping scandal.
“The final decision has been taken already”, International Olympic Committee spokesman Mark Adams said.
“Under these exceptional circumstances, Russian athletes in any of the 28 Olympic summer sports have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions, and the “presumption of innocence” can not be applied to them”, added the IWF. Sports sources told AFP that the 24-year-old had gone to the tribunal, which has special courts set up in Rio to hear such cases. Instead, the International Federation (IF) for each sport-not just the 20 (!) implicated in the McLaren report-must decide whether its Russian delegation can compete.
The Canadian lawyer who accused Russian Federation of operating a state-run doping programme is facing “a deluge of requests” for information on individual athletes implicated in his investigation.
Gibson, now a tax lawyer, is the president of Swimming Canada, which selects the athletes who will represent the country in Rio.
The final number of cleared athletes is to be announced on Saturday.
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World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) president Craig Reedie, who is also an International Olympic Committee vice-president, is to give a report on the agency’s activities on Saturday.
