Last month, the International Olympic Committee refused to ban the Russian team as a whole, and allowed each individual sporting body to make their own decisions about whether to allow Russian athletes compete.
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The exclusion of almost a third of Russia’s athletes for their ties to a government-sanctioned doping program was a blow to the integrity of the Olympics and will severely diminish Russia’s presence across several sports here.
Critics had called for the entire team to be banned to show systematic cheating is unacceptable.
“It’s a first step”, Matthieu Reeb, secretary-general of the court, told Reuters. Some sports bodies that conduct extensive drug-testing of their own, such as the International Tennis Federation, have been able to wave through the Russian contingent with confidence.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach and fellow Olympic executives rejected that option, a decision Bach defended this week by saying he wanted to avoid the “death and devastation” it could have produced. “No athletes from any country … had the rules changed to bar those previously guilty of doping”. The United States has the largest number of athletes, with 556.
Organizers of the Winter Olympics in 2022 in Beijing are promising that everything is already on track for the country’s second Olympics, building on experience from the Summer Games in 2008. The brand new complex of residential towers are where almost 11,000 athletes and some 6,000 coaches and other handlers will sleep, eat and train during the upcoming games, that will kickoff on August 5.
All of this is occurring as the Opening Ceremonies kick off Friday.
The IOC refused to issue a blanket ban on competition, leaving the decision to individual federations.
The Cas said an International Olympic Committee rule barring Russian athletes with a prior doping conviction from competing was unenforceable and could open the door for up to 12 athletes to appeal their bans, including the swimmer Yuliya Efimova.
Local media reported that a bike-riding robber approached a vehicle allegedly carrying a Russian vice-consul with his wife and daughter, CNN says, citing TASS.
“Not one team underwent such strict requirements as Russian athletes”, Zhukov told a news conference in Rio. “It’s a mess, and exhibit “A” of how truly incapable sport is of policing itself”.
There are ten athletes who aren’t just coming to compete for medals during the Rio Olympics, but to represent the plight of some 65 million refugees worldwide.
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“We want to have full light shed on this anti-doping system in Russian Federation”, he said. As he has since the beginning of the saga, he said that while the presumption of innocence had been reversed “natural justice does not allow us to deprive human beings of the right to prove their innocence”. Sometimes we like the decisions, sometimes not, but we always respect them.
