Calls for a complete ban on Russian Federation had intensified since a WADA-commissioned report from Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer, accused Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing a vast doping program of its Olympic athletes. It punts responsibility to each sport’s global federation on an absurdly compressed timetable, further complicating a Summer Olympics already beset with problems.
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It follows the International Olympic Committee’s ruling to give individual sports the decision whether they allow the country’s athletes to compete.
– Travis T. Tygart, the chief executive of USADA, the American anti-doping body.
Tennis, on the other hand, took all of an hour to digest the IOC’s decision and declared all of Russia’s would-be Olympic tennis players eligible on the basis of the extensive testing it has subjected them to over the last two and a half years. The IOC chose to uphold a ban put in place by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the governing body of international track and field. The IOC accepted that ruling, but would not extend it to other sports.
Zhukov said that weightlifters Anastasia Romanova and Tatiana Kashirina – who won silver at the 2012 Games – and freestyle wrestler Viktor Lebedev would not compete in Rio in light of the IOC’s criteria, R-Sport reported. “This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world”.
The scandal is in danger of becoming about more than sport and the International Olympic Committee is widely thought to have buckled under diplomatic pressure from Russian Federation. “We have set the bar to the limit”.
Expect bureaucratic confusion and legal/arbitration challenges right up to the Opening Ceremony on August 5 in Rio. “In this sense sports is headed in a direction that we have not desired”.
Russian media, meanwhile, praised the decision not to allow Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova, who exposed mass doping in athletics, to compete at Rio. Stepanova, now living in the United States, competed as an individual athlete at last month’s European Championships in Amsterdam.
A three-time world junior champion and nine-time European junior champion, Ustinova could now be thrown out of the sport as she had been warned by the Russian authorities for failing a test for a prescription steroid when only 14. Not a great message to whistleblowers going forward. He cheered Russian athletes in arenas and in the mountains and celebrated with them as they added to the host country’s medal haul.
“FINA acknowledges and supports the IOC’s position in respect of the participation of clean Russian athletes to the Olympic Games in Rio”, FINA’s statement read. Crouch said that McLaren’s report provided solid evidences that should have been reciprocated with stronger sanctions.
The 24-year-old is also four-time world champion in the breaststroke.
Long jumper Darya Klishina is due to be the sole Russian track and field competitor to feature in Rio, because she is based in Florida and supposedly out of the Russian system.
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“You can’t punish twice for the same thing”, Svishchev said.
