Rio de Janeiro (dpa) – The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rules that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) can not ban Russian swimmer Yulia Efimova from the Rio Olympics over past doping offences.
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“For Viktor Lebedev, all is well”, delegation chief Igor Kazikov said, adding that Lebedev, who appealed against a ban along with other Russian athletes, had been authorised to compete by a special International Olympic Committee commission.
AIBA said it had been notified of the decision by the International Olympic Committee’s three-member panel, responsible for reviewing the eligibility of all Russian athletes who are approved to compete by their international federations.
The review panel was made up of IOC Athletes’ Commission chairwoman Claudia Bokel of Germany, IOC Medical Commission chairman Ugur Erdener of Turkey, and Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr. of Spain.
“The IOC Decision deprives the Russian athletes of the presumption of innocence and rather establishes a presumption of guilt”, CAS said in a news release.
“Thomas has spoken about the concept of individual justice versus collective responsibility – it’s what our United States Constitution is all about”, Probst said “It’s not the ideal solution, but I think it’s the best solution that could have been arrived at given the information and facts that were available”.
But athlete support in Probst’s home country was far from unanimous.
The Games officially start later on Friday with the Greek team set to enter the stadium first during the opening ceremony – clearly missing one of their athletes.
The decision was announced Thursday with respect to the appeals of one swimmer, Yulia Efimova, and two rowers, Anastasia Karabelshikova and Ivan Podshivalov.
That followed an investigation for the World Anti-Doping Agency that detailed state-sponsored cheating in Russian Federation. The USOC leader credited the weightlifting, rowing and swimming federations for their decisive action.
U.S. Olympic Committee CEO Scott Blackmun claimed the U.S. athletes are not overly concerned about going head-to-head with Russian athletes who may or may not be clean.
Martasidis, who was to compete in the 85kg category, had arrived in Rio hours earlier only to be informed of a positive test from an out-of-competition doping control, his team said.
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Probst said the IOC is in unison about necessary measures to stamp out the culture of doping in worldwide sport, however decisive action needs to happen immediately.
