The entire Russia Paralympic team was banned on August 7, 2016, from competing in the Paralympic Games in September as punishment for the country’s systematic doping program.
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The IPC acted in the wake of a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and written by Richard McLaren regarding a staggering level of state-sponsored, organized doping across the Russian sports system.
Following the commission’s report, WADA recommended the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) and all international sports federations ban Russian athletes from all international sports competitions, including Rio 2016.
He told Russian news agencies the decision had a whiff of second-grade politics about it and questioned why the IPC, which he said had previously lavished praise on Russia’s Paralympians, had changed its mind so suddenly.
The IPC had opened suspension proceedings against the Russian Paralympic Committee on July 22 following the WADA report and additional information it had received from McLaren.
“I believe the Russian government has catastrophically failed its Para athletes”, said Craven.
Rio Olympic organisers continued to be plagued with problems as strong winds, a knife-point robbery of a foreign government official and fresh doping scandals on Sunday threatened to derail the smooth running of the world’s largest multi-sport event.
“I commend the IPC governing board for their leadership on this matter, and for clearly demonstrating the independence of the Paralympic movement, and the importance of clean sport to the future integrity and credibility of the Paralympic movement”. Their medals over morals mentality disgusts me.
He added: “At the same time as feeling great sympathy towards the Russian athletes, we must not forget the feeling of those athletes from their nations who competed at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter games”.
The summer Paralympics are scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from September 7-18. The over two hundred Russian athletes now in competition had to be cleared by their respective sporting federations to enable them compete.
Everyone is watching the Rio Olympics, but one country’s team has already lost their games.
“Right now there’s still a lot of uncertainty with the appeals process as it moves forward”, says James Hood, Swimming Canada’s team leader for the Rio Paralympics.
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Those exchanges clearly played a huge part in the decision as McLaren was able to reveal even more cases from Paralympic sport than he listed in his preliminary report.
