The team was initially scheduled to leave for Brazil July 22.
Advertisement
Russia’s eight-member weightlifting team was kicked out of the games on Friday for what the global federation called “extremely shocking” doping results that brought the sport into “disrepute”.
“We’re after medals, that’s it”, handball player Anna Sen said as she prepared to board the flight.
“We will fight for those who were not able to go”.
French President Francois Hollande is flying out to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics next week to help support Paris with its Olympic bid.
Team spirit, laughter and hopes of Olympic glory were in the air at a special sendoff ceremony for the Russian team at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow.
There are now 117 Russian competitors banned from the Games – including 67 track and field athletes.
The track team did, however, attend the ceremonial farewell with Putin on Wednesday, when the Russian president branded restrictions on Russia as “pure discrimination”. Rejecting calls by more than a dozen anti-doping agencies for a complete ban on Russia, the International Olympic Committee left it to the federations to vet which athletes could compete or not.
“This is a decision we just had the opportunity to discuss with some athletes”, Bach said in Rio. “People have tried to break us down, but it’s never worked”.
“My conscience is clean”, said long jumper Vasily Kopeikin, another athlete barred from Rio. “Time will show those people who suspended us”.
Kopeikin added that he would not watch any Olympic events in which Russian Federation was not taking part.
Russia’s Olympic committee (ROC) has removed three cyclists from the team heading to the Rio Games while three more, who were potentially implicated in the McLaren report, are under investigation, the UCI announced on Thursday.
The International Olympic Committee resisted a blanket ban on Russia following the most recent explosive report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), who detailed an elaborate doping scheme in Russian sports orchestrated by the government.
Most federations have not excluded Russians on the basis of a lack of testing, but rowing and weightlifting are the exceptions. Other sports, such as judo and tennis, have allowed the entire Russian team to compete in their sport. These rulings must still be ratified by CAS.
“Under these exceptional circumstances, Russian athletes in any of the 28 Olympic summer sports have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions, and the “presumption of innocence” can not be applied to them”, added the IWF. Kashirina won silver at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, is a four-time world champion and holds the snatch and clean and jerk world records.
Advertisement
In justifying its actions against Russia, the IWF said retests of samples from seven Russian weightlifters who took part in the 2008 Beijing Olympics or 2012 London Olympics resulted in positive tests, and more were expected.
