The IOC approved the entry of 271 Russian athletes for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics on Thursday, meaning 70 percent of the country’s original team will compete in the games after the scandal over state-sponsored doping.
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“We think it’s unfair that some Russian athletes like Yelena Isinbayeva and Shubenkov, who have never been accused of doping, are not allowed to compete this time”, Zhukov said.
The IOC came under intense pressure to ban all Russian athletes from the Rio Games.
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has earlier announced that serious reformations were planned for the national weightlifting federation in the wake of the IWF’s decision to ban all Russian weightlifters from the 2016 Olympics.
Russia, which narrowly avoided a complete ban from the Olympics following revelations of state-backed doping, had hoped to have between 272 and 280 athletes declared eligible for Rio after the International Olympic Committee review.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) independent commission, chaired by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, released the now infamous July 18 report on the results of a probe into the accusations of doping and manipulation of tests by Russian athletes and officials at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games.
The entire Russian team was banned last week after the IWF said “the integrity of weightlifting has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians”.
For him personally, Bach said, the test for defending the decision was “to look into the eyes of all the athletes”.
Russia’s numbers continue to swell after the International Olympic Committee cleared six sailors for competition.
Chinese athletes are among a range of athletes from different nations who have complained about conditions in the Olympic village.
While all Russian weightlifters have been banned, all of the country’s boxers have been allowed to compete.
The final decision on the admission of the Russian Olympic team to Rio is yet to be made by a recently formed panel of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). It is unclear whether she will be competing for the Russian team or as an independent athlete.
Russian swimming great Alexander Popov also hit out at the track and field ban with a personal attack on Britain’s Sebastian Coe, president of the IAAF. “The IOC is calling for a more robust and efficient anti-doping system”. He said his organization could not be blamed for the timing of the McLaren report, published just two weeks before the commencement of the Rio Games, or the fact that information previously offered to WADA was not followed up. But Nichols added that WADA can only make recommendations and has to respect the final decision of the IOC.
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IOC President Thomas Bach said that all of the relevant worldwide sports federations also had to be informed before the final list could be announced.
