The International Paralympic Committee on Sunday banned Russian Federation from participating in the upcoming 2016 Paralympic Games for allegedly violating international doping rules.
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Russian Federation finished second in the medal standings at the 2012 London Paralympics and had 267 athlete slots for Rio in 18 sports, which will only now be filled in September if an appeal is successful.
The International Paralympics Committee announced on Sunday that the entire Russian Paralympic team has been banned from the 2016 Rio Paralympics as a result of Russia’s involvement in doping.
The move was punishment for the country running a doping operation that polluted sports by prioritizing “medals over morals”, according to the IPC.
In the case of the Paralympians, researchers who tested samples from athletes revealed that at least 27 samples from several sports showed some influence from the Russian government, including 11 positive results that were switched to negative.
He noted that the situation was tragically not about athletes cheating a system, but about a state-run system that was cheating the athletes.
“There is a great, great threat to world sport, to what we would view as the sporting spirit, that can not be allowed to change fair competition, fair play, abiding by the rules”.
“It impairs clean athletes. for political reasons rather than sporting, and goes against the Paralympic movement’s principle of inclusion”, World Archery said in a statement.
“I believe none of the national Paralympic committees were more rigorous and attentive in implementing the anti-doping program than the RPC”.
Mikhail Terentyev, head of Russian Paralympic Committee, said the IPC decision was a “huge injustice”.
“This has without doubt been the hardest decision the IPC has ever had to take”, an IPC email stated.
On Sunday, Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko called the ban “beyond belief”.
Russian Paralympic Committee president Vladimir Lukin is no less critical.
The International Olympic Committee made a decision to let Russia into the Rio Olympics now underway, but eliminated 100 athletes who were filtered out by individual federations. The consensus is that the IPC’s decision was taken without any proper consultation with the relevant federations responsible for the sports at the Paralympic Games, and against the best interests of these federations.
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It says some of the athletes apparently implicated may not have had evidence of doping against them. Rather than taking a bold stance, the International Olympic Committee chose to allow individual sport federations to make their decisions. The Russian Paralympic teams, however, weren’t so lucky: they have been completely banned from the upcoming Paralympics in Rio due to alleged widespread Russian doping during the 2014 Sochi Paralympics. If the International Olympic Committee can’t do it, but the IPC can, how does that happen?
