Russian swimmers Nikita Lobintsev and Vladimir Morozov have filed lawsuits at the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) challenging their ban from next month’s Olympic Games in Rio, a lawyer told TASS on Saturday.
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All of Russia’s weightlifters were banned from the Olympics on Friday for doping for what the worldwide federation called “extremely shocking” results that brought the sport into “disrepute”.
The IOC has taken fierce criticism for not ordering a blanket ban on Russian Federation after an independent report said there was state-organised doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
New criticism of the athletes’ village in Rio added to the dark clouds hanging over the Games which start in one week.
The criteria states that only if they have not previously failed a drugs test and can prove they are clean and not associated with the country’s doping regime are Russian athletes eligible to take part in the Games.
The IWF announced yesterday that they were following the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and that none of Russia’s eight weightlifters would be allowed to compete at Rio 2016.
In December 2014, amidst all the qualification rounds and preparations for the Rio Olympic Games, a German documentary rocked the whole sporting world.
Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko on July 29 said that 272 of the country’s 387 Olympic athletes had been cleared to go by worldwide federations that govern individual sports, and the number could rise. Boxing, golf, gymnastics and taekwondo federations have yet to report their decisions.
A panel of arbitrators will hear the case and issue a ruling.
Lobintsev and US -based Morozov were part of Russia’s bronze-medal winning 4x100m freestyle team at the London 2012 Games, while Lobintsev also won a silver medal in the 4x200m freestyle relay at Beijing 2008.
CAS said the appeals were filed against the International Olympic Committee and FINA.
As a result of her revelations, Russian track and field athletes have been banned from the Games with many Russians from other sports also excluded over past doping offences. They also want FINA’s decision to be “set aside” and for the IOC to validate the entries submitted by the Russian Olympic Committee.
According to the International Olympic Committee decision “the IFs to examine the information contained in the IP Report and for such goal seek from WADA the names of athletes and National Federations (NFs) implicated”.
The executive board meeting was pushed back so IOC president Thomas Bach could attend the delayed inauguration of a Rio metro line which will link the Barra Olympic zone to the rest of Rio.
It said the punishment was an “appropriate sanction” to “preserve the status of the sport”. “There has never been a clean Olympics and there is no reason to believe that Rio will be clean”, he told O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper.
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The final number of cleared athletes is to be announced on Saturday.
