The chief spokesman for the Rio Olympics told The Associated Press on Monday that Olympic athletes can rest assured they will be safe in the city’s waters.
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More than 250 Russian athletes from an original team of 387 have been cleared to compete but still await the green light this week from a three-member International Olympic Committee panel that has the final say.
News correspondent Steve Scott reports from Rio de Janeiro.
While more than 100 Russians – including the track and field team – have been banned from the games, more than 250 have so far been cleared to compete by the federations.
Rio has faced criticism for shoddy construction since April, when a bike path that was hailed as a top legacy project of the Olympics collapsed, killing two people.
Swimmer Yulia Efimova and wrestler Viktor Lebidev registered appeals at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) taking the total number of Russian challenges to International Olympic Committee sanctions to four, with more possible.
“We are not responsible for the supervision of doping laboratories”.
Bach said the Russian Federation scandal along with Brazil’s political and economic crises had made the runup to the first Olympics in South America “challenging”.
But WADA president Sir Craig Reedie defended the agency’s response to available evidence of Russian doping, and the timing of the McLaren Report’s release on July 18, in a statement on Monday.
It follows the discovery of systematic, state-backed Russian doping culminating in last month’s McLaren report, which found Russia’s sports ministry and secret service were involved in a large-scale cover-up of positive tests.
He said athletes are now happy.
Nadal is scheduled to carry the Spanish flag at the opening ceremony on Friday night at the Maracana stadium.
“While it is destabilising in the lead-up to the Games, it is obvious, given the seriousness of the revelations that he uncovered, that they had to be published and acted upon without delay”.
Sailors training at the Marina da Gloria used a second ramp at the venue, which is made of concrete and around three times smaller than the one built for the competition. She replaces Claudia Bokel, a former Olympic fencer from Germany whose four-year term is expiring.
Ruggiero will join Anita DeFrantz on the 15-member board. The other host cities will be Salvador, Sao Paulo, Brasilia, Belo Horizonte and the jungle city of Manaus. They’ve been embroiled in controversy, from the Zika virus, to crime concerns to worries about filthy water where the Olympic sailing, rowing and open water swimming events will take place. But it does not remain a threat to the athletes.
“I hope those clean Russian athletes that are here are able to put that behind them and compete to the best of their ability”.
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Testing at several of the city’s world-famous beaches has shown that in addition to persistently high viral loads, the beaches often have levels of bacterial markers for sewage pollution that would be cause for concern overseas – and sometimes even exceed Rio state’s lax water safety standards.
