Yulia Efimova will be competing at the Olympics after all.
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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.
Meldonium was added to the World Anti-Doping Agency’s list of banned substances from January 1, but some positive tests were later overturned after the agency said there was a lack of clear scientific evidence about how long it takes for the drug to be excreted from the body.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday described the International Olympic Committee (IOC) rule barring Russian athletes with prior doping sanctions from competing in the Games as “unenforceable”, reports Tass.
In the women’s 100-metre butterfly, Natalia Lovtsova wasn’t listed on the initial list that came out.
The list was revised just hours before the preliminaries, adding Lovtcova to the last of six heats.
Lovtsova didn’t swim fast enough to make the semifinals in the event, finishing in 59:19, good enough for 26th overall out of 45 swimmers in the event. Darya Ustinova, Mikhail Dovgalyuk and Anastasia Krapivina have also apparently been reinstated, Russian news agency R-Sport reported.
“For an athlete that’s clean, it’s really frustrating for me to see that”, Canadian swimmer Ryan Cochrane said.
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Horton was asked about a reported incident between the two at the practice pool earlier in the week. Australia’s Mack Horton told the AP that Chinese swimmer Sun Yang, “splashed me to say hello, and I didn’t respond because I don’t have time for drug cheats”.
