Following the doping scandal that engulfed Russian Federation and its athletes going into the 2016 Olympic Games at Rio de Janeiro, a number of its swimmers have been permitted to participate, it has emerged.
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After Friday’s opening ceremony, it has been revealed that two athletes will be sent home from the Olympic Games due to doping on Saturday.
Their comments were covered widely by Russian state television and stirred outrage among Ukrainians who view Moscow as their existential foe.
This is the second positive test of a competitor with teams having arrived in Rio after an Irish boxer was provisionally suspended on Thursday for failing a dope test.
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 report issued by McLaren on 18 July said Russia’s sports ministry was helped by the secret service to manipulate Russian samples at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and other major events in Russia.
Stepanova had hoped to compete as an independent athlete under he International Olympic Committee flag.
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.
Is it fair to ban Russian athletes?
For more about opening ceremony for Rio Olympic, CCTV America’s Asieh Namdar interviewed Mike Bako, Sports editor of Daily National.
A three-member International Olympic Committee panel which reviewed the list submitted by the federations was due to announce its final figure for the Russian squad later on Thursday.
The applications against the decisions taken by IOC and global sports federations were filed by Anastasia Karabelshikova and Ivan Podshivalov (rowing), as well as Yulia Efimova (swimming).
The world’s top Olympic official also said that all collected doping samples from the upcoming Summer Olympics in Brazil would be stored for the next ten years and would be subjected for re-tests at any moment.
“So, as of now, the Russian team is probably the cleanest in Rio”. She has won an appeal at the CAS against the FINA decision to ban her from the Games because of her past doping.
“We had to follow the rules of justice and justice has to be independent from politics”, Bach said.
These are the first athletes to be cleared by the panel.
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“However in contrast some other athletes, like the American runner Gatlin, have been admitted to the Games”.
