The bans brought the total of Russian athletes barred from Rio to 115 from an original team of 387.
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“The [Russian Weightlifting] Federation will do everything in its power to rehabilitate us, but it is impossible to do it before the Olympics; there is no time to do anything”, Russian weightlifter Aleksey Lovchev told RT, commenting on the IWF decision.
However, Russia’s best-known track and field athlete, two-time Olympic gold medalist Yelena Isinbayeva, said she had been refused in her last attempt to make the team for Rio following the blanket ban on Russia in that sport.
Coming off three straight flashy victories in Las Vegas and California, the United States shot 42.4 percent from the field and committed 13 turnovers in by far its worst offensive performance of its five-city tour in preparation for next week’s Rio de Janeiro Olympics. “I think the general feeling is that it is appreciated that, on the one hand, we are sanctioning a (doping) system, but on the other hand we have given athletes who were not part of the system the opportunity to demonstrate this and then to be allowed to take part in the Olympic Games”.
Meanwhile, Russia have said they will launch a legal bid to reinstate 19 of the country’s rowers who were banned from Rio because of insufficient drug testing.
Russian Federation as a stand-alone nation have won 26 medals in the sport since first competing in 1996, including three golds. Other federations may not be as punitive, as they will “carry out an individual analysis of each Russian athlete’s anti-doping record – taking into account only reliable, adequate global tests”.
The IWF statement said that a re-analysis of samples from the London and Beijing games had returned seven positives from Russian athletes.
The IOC asked the International Federations to “apply their respective rules in relation to the sanctioning of entire NFs”.
French President Francois Hollande is flying out to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics next week to help support Paris with its Olympic bid.
The 34-year-old Isinbayeva has previously said she plans to retire if she does not go to the Olympics, but did not comment on that in her post.
“All Russian wrestlers now qualified for Rio 2016 have all been tested in 2016 by WADA-accredited laboratories outside of Moscow”, UWW said in a statement.
Tests conducted by the Russian anti-doping agency, which is suspended following repeated allegations of cover-ups, are not considered valid for Olympic purposes. Instead, the IOC ruled that they would leave it up to the individual global sports federations to determine whether to approve each athlete or ban them based on past doping offences or their involvement in the scandal.
Today, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), the governing body of Olympic Weightlifting, chose to ban the Russian Weightlifting Federation from having Athletes and Technical Officials participate in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
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VOLLEYBALL – International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) said it had submitted a list of Russian volleyball and beach volleyball participants to the IOC and CAS for approval. Boxing, golf, gymnastics, handball and taekwondo still must publicly confirm their decisions on what to do with the athletes in those sports.
