Russian Federation will send their smallest ever Olympic contingent to the upcoming Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
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On Wednesday, the executive board of Russia’s National Olympic Committee endorsed the membership list of the team.
A Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling earlier Thursday confirmed an IAAF ban on Russian track and field athletes from competing at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics. The IOC will likely take that ruling into account before making its own decision on Sunday. “It goes a lot deeper than just sport or the Olympic Committee”. All arguments are aimed against ARAF and there is nothing concrete against athletes.
Zhukov said he was hopeful of winning the appeal, adding that Russia’s plans for the Olympics assumed the track and field team would be allowed to compete.
“Athletes can be confident that anti-doping sample analysis has been robust throughout the Laboratory’s suspension and that it will also be during the Games”.
The IAAF says the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s ruling to confirm a ban on Russian Federation “has created a level playing field for athletes”.
The IAAF first banned the Russian track and field federation, and its athletes, from global competition in November following allegations in a World Anti-Doping Agency inquiry report of state-organized doping and cover-ups.
The IOC said it “will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice”.
The ban was confirmed in June, when the IAAF also said the culture of obstructing anti-doping tests in Russian Federation had not changed. He says Russian athletics officials failed to act on doping in time and hopes “that this situation can encourage the management” to continue reforms.
“Preparations for the World Cup are in full swing”, Dmitry Peskov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, said Wednesday.
The escalating doping scandal is not the only issue to cause problems for Russian Federation, though, as it prepares for the World Cup.
The Russian plot involved hundreds of athletes in 30 sports, including 21 contested in the Summer Games.
CAS issued the verdict on Thursday in the case of the athletes who had sought to overturn the ban imposed by the governing body of world athletics, the IAAF, following allegations of state-sponsored doping and cover-ups.
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“It was a government-instituted program and every doping test was scanned to make sure there wasn’t a positive – and if it happened to be a Russian athlete who had a positive test, it disappeared and it was replaced by a negative test”.
