Pic: ReutersRIO DE JANEIRO: The International Olympic Committee warned organizers of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro five years ago that construction contracts they drew up could give developers incentives to cut corners, presaging problems with athletes’ housing that drew complaints from several countries this week, documents showed.
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During his send-off address to the Olympic-bound athletes, Putin accused the International Association of Athletic Federations (IAAF) of “blatant discrimination” for banning Russia’s track and field athletes.
Viktor Lebedev, who won gold at the World Championships in 2010 and 2011, had been among the favourites for a medal in wrestling’s 57kg freestyle division after winning gold at the European Games past year.
Weightlifting is a sport historically associated with doping offenses, and Russia’s athletes have been some of the most heavily implicated in the recently-published McLaren Report sponsored by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which allegedly exposed state-sponsored cheating.
“We trust that we could also clarify that the International Olympic Committee ruling on previously banned Russian athletes does not apply to Yulia as she was declared eligible to run”.
The Moscow tournament, which was announced by Russian state news agency TASS, will feature banned athletes including Olympic high jump champion Ivan Ukhov and world 110 metres hurdles champion Sergey Shubenkov.
Russias weightlifting team has been dogged by doping cases and faced further embarrassment Wednesday when retests of samples from the 2012 Olympics saw four Russians, including three medalists, test positive. “The integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians”, the IWF said in a statement.
The IOC’s ruling executive board opens a two-day meeting today, its last formal gathering before Friday’s opening ceremony at Maracana Stadium.
Russian Federation is to launch a last-ditch legal bid to reinstate 19 of its rowers who were banned from the Rio Olympics because of insufficient drug testing. That won’t happen prior to the Games, and so he said that the test will be applied to post-Rio retests.
Three Russian cyclists have withdrawn and three others are under investigation.
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said Friday that, so far, 272 of the country’s athletes had been cleared by global federations, out of an original team of 387.
The IOC itself controversially rejected the chance to impose a blanket ban on all Russians at the Games, but the IWF have ruled that none will be allowed to compete in weightlifting. He added that banned athletes are planning to sue the authorities after the Olympics are over.
The IOC invited the couple to Rio but also ruled that Stepanova could not take part in the Games despite her role in lifting the lid on the use of banned substances.
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The new IAAF president has already banned 67 of 68 Russian track athletes.
