McLaren’s report last week specifically detailed how Russian state officials allegedly intervened to cover up hundreds of failed drug tests.
Advertisement
ICF secretary general Simon Toulson said: “This is a bitter blow for the Olympic movement and we are saddened that our sport is implicated”.
That includes Stepanova, though the legality of that ruling is in question: In 2011, the Court of Arbitration for Sport invalidated the IOC’s Rule 45, which called for Olympic bans for any athlete who’d served more than a six-month doping penalty.
Representatives for Rotenberg, a billionaire industrialist who has been placed on a US sanctions blacklist because of his close ties to Putin, did not respond to a request for comment.
Rowing Australia boss Rob Scott said the Federation had made the right call in upholding the integrity of the sport.
FEI president Ingmar De Vos said yesterday (Monday, 25 July) he could see “absolutely no reason” why the Russian equestrian athletes should not compete in Rio.
Dyachenko won the men’s K2 gold medal at London 2012 along with his team-mate Iurii Postrigai, who will also miss out on Rio although he was not implicated in the report. The IOC delay, apparently to obtain legal advice but also probably to consult with public relations experts and within the worldwide sport community, gave time for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), a number of national anti-doping agencies (such as the CCES in Canada) and many national team athletes in different countries to begin “piling on” with calls to ban all Russian athletes from Rio.
Posting pictures on its website of dirty windows and a filthy shower, the Belarus Olympic Committee said, “There remains much for the Rio organizing committee to do so that the living conditions meet sanitary requirements”.
The UIPM, which approved Russia’s other three entries, says it “is fully committed in the fight against doping”.
Vitaly Stepanov, who worked for Russia’s anti-doping agency, and his wife, former drugs cheat Yulia Stepanova, helped lift the lid on Russian doping in a series of documentaries by German broadcaster ARD. “In my view, she deserved to be an Olympian a lot more than when she was a doped athlete”.
Ilia Frolov, one of the two Russian pentathletes banned by the sport’s federation.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has banned all Russian competitors from the athletic’s section of the Rio Games, something Harting welcomes as “the correct action”. The IOC refused to accept testing done by Russian agencies because of evidence that the process was corrupted.
The umbrella body for summer Olympic sports says the Russian doping scandals have been misused for “media exposure and political influence” at the expense of the Rio Games.
Advertisement
The International Judo Federation (IJF), however, told Reuters the 11 Russian competitors who qualified for the Rio Games will be allowed to compete, a move likely to please Putin who is a judo blackbelt and IJF honorary president.
