“In doing so, the federation pointed to the multiple cases of doping by the country’s weightlifters”. It said the punishment was an “appropriate sanction” to “preserve the status of the sport”.
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Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, has promised there will also be an appeal to CAS against the blanket ban of the country’s weightlifting team.
More than 100 athletes from what was originally a 387-strong team have been barred from competing in Rio by global sports federations under sanctions that most Russian athletes consider unfair.
Referring to Russia’s ban at the Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that individual international sporting federations were free to decide which athletes will be competing at the Games.
As the world’s finest athletes converge on Brazil for the 2016 Olympic Games, more than 50 members of Russia’s nearly entirely banned track-and-field team were among 150 competing at the much more modest Stars-2016 tournament. For the women, Albania, Georgia and Moldova became eligible.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) recently found that Russian Federation engaged in a state-sanctioned program to subvert drug tests before and during the SochiWinter Olympics in 2014.
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 panel will receive independent advice from the Court of Arbitration for Sport before making its decisions.
The IWF said the ban also applied to Russia’s technical official for the Rio Games, whose appointment was withdrawn.
But adds that his rowers “are training and are ready to travel” to Rio at short notice if they win their case.
World Rowing’s approval process left just six rowers eligible to compete for Rio, meaning Russian Federation could only compete in one event – the men’s four – and meant reserve crews from around the world have rushed to Brazil to compete.
Anatoly Terekhov, head of the Russian Taekwondo Union, says all Russians entered for taekwondo in Rio have been approved by the World Taekwondo Federation, in comments to Russian agency R-Sport.
“We ran into such injustice when they took away the Olympic Games from us, but, as I said yesterday, it will only make us stronger”, Isinbayeva said in a statement.
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Rio’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, has taken pride in the fact that 57 percent of the almost 40 billion reais ($12.3 billion) spent on the Olympics is private money, garnered by using PPPs on a scale never before seen at a Games. The miracle did not happen.
