The Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) upheld in part appeals lodged by Russian athletes by ruling that the IOC Executive Board’s decision banning the athletes with doping record from participating in the Olympic Games is unenforceable.
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The IOC instead it left it up to individual sporting federations to clear Russian competitors if they met a set of criteria, including a clean doping past and sufficient tests at global events.
The IOC announced on Saturday that its panel, consisting of Ugur Erdener, the IOC’s medical commission chairman, Germany’s Claudia Bokel and fellow IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., would review the decisions by the individual sports federations over the eligibility of Russian athletes.
But with about 110 athletes cut from the Russian entry of 389, the squad in Rio will be Russia s smallest at an Olympics in the past century.
“Not one team underwent such strict requirements as Russian athletes”, Zhukov told a news conference in Rio on Thursday.
“What is more, the team is undergoing additional testing in the Olympic village”, Zhukov said.
Russian boxers, judokas and shooters were among those given last-minute approval by the IOC.
They will be joined by eight Russian tennis players, 18 shooters, 11 judokas and Russian golfer Maria Verchenova, the sports’ worldwide federations said.
Russian Federation has already suffered the indignity of its entire track and field team being banned over unconfirmed reports that some athletes took part in a second state-sponsored doping scheme.
“We wanted to follow the rules of justice, independent from politics”.
“The Hellenic Olympic Committee has requested the testing of every Greek athlete taking part in the Games”.
Bach added that beginning with the Olympics in Brazil the responsibility of imposing penalties on athletes guilty of doping abuse would rest with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne instead of the IOC.
A spokesperson for the International Olympic Committee said: ” Having discussed the matter and consulting with the chair of the Athletes’ Commission, the International Olympic Committee made a decision to accept the five candidatures. A petition calling on the International Olympic Committee to reverse its decision not to allow the whistleblower Yulia Stepanova to compete has gathered more than 240,000 signatures but there appears little chance of a change in position.
Wrestler Viktor Lebedev and sailor Pavel Sozykin were waiting to hear the result of appeals to CAS against their exclusion from Rio.
The threat of having the entire Russian delegation banned from the Olympics was seemingly a realistic possibility as details of the investigation and allegations against Russian athletes were being learned. “The hard question we had to answer was: Can you hold an individual responsible for the wrongdoing of his or her country?” “We had to respect basic principles of natural law”.
Meanwhile, the men’s soccer competition got underway a day before the Gmanes’ official opening.
In the other Group A match in Brasilia, Iraq and Denmark also played to a scoreless draw, leaving all four teams tied.
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In the jungle city of Manaus, Colombia and Sweden drew 2-2 in Group B.
