Bach said the presence of the IOC’s Olympic refugee team – comprising 10 athletes who have fled war or poverty to compete in Rio – was a riposte to a world “where selfishness is gaining ground, where certain people claim to be superior to others”.
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The applications against the decisions taken by IOC and global sports federations were filed by Anastasia Karabelshikova and Ivan Podshivalov (rowing), as well as Yulia Efimova (swimming).
Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov told reporters earlier that 271 of his country’s athletes had been cleared to participate.
Russia, who avoided a complete ban from the Olympics following revelations of state-backed doping, hopes to have anywhere between 272 and 280 athletes declared eligible for Rio after the International Olympic Committee review.
But with about 110 athletes cut from the Russian entry of 389, the squad in Rio will be Russia s smallest at an Olympics in the past century.
The respective governing bodies of athletics and weightlifting, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) and the International Weightlifting Federation, had already decided that no Russian athletes will take part in their sports during the Games. The Lausanne-based court said barring them from the Games “does not respect the athletes’ right of natural justice”.
“With this reanalysis programme, we have already identified that almost a hundred athletes tested positive and they can not participate in these Olympic Games”.
Instead of an outright ban on Russian participation, as the World Anti-Doping Agency had urged, the IOC will impose a convoluted case-by-case review of Russian athletes, carried out by the 28 global federations that govern each Olympic sport.
Stepanova’s hopes of competing were raised on Thursday when CAS said that ban was “unenforceable” but the 30-year-old will not make a late appeal in order to compete.
But when Fina issued a list of seven Russian swimmers banned in the wake of the damning McLaren Report on state-backed doping in Russia, Efimova’s name was on it. “At no point did the International Olympic Committee, unlike the IAAF, demand publicly from the Russian sports authorities that they recognize our whistle-blowing as an important and valuable contribution for clean sport in Russia”.
The court ruled that athletes could not be punished twice for the same doping offence. However, these numbers could grow after a sports tribunal ruled in favor of some banned Russian athletes. “You had to flee from your homes because of violence, hunger or just because you were different”, said Bach.
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Russia, who finished fourth on the London 2012 Olympic medals table and have topped the table seven times, will have their smallest team since 1912 at the Rio Games, which open on Friday.
