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International Gymnastics Federation backs IOC decision on Russia
Each sport was controversially asked to make its own decision on the eligibility of Russian athletes by the International Olympic Committee on Sunday, when it decided against banning the entire team.
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But Harting, who has always been a fierce critic of Bach and doping in sport, said the situation was “simply embarrassing”, before expressing his belief that under Bach’s presidency, the International Olympic Committee has “reached a new level of disappointment”.
“The ICF will continue its strong zero-tolerance stance and remove all athletes that contravene its rules in anyway”, said Simon Toulson, the International Canoe Federation’s general secretary.
The five were named as Elena Aniushina, Natalia Podolskaya, Alexander Dyachenko, Andrey Kraitor and Alexey Korovashkov.
In a further blow to Russia’s medal hopes, two modern pentathletes and five Russian canoe sprinters – including the 2012 Olympic champion Alexander Dyachenko – were excluded by their sports’ governing bodies on Tuesday.
Modern pentathlon became the latest sport to announce its decision on Russian eligibility when it blocked Ilia Frolov and Maksim Kustov because both appear in the McLaren report for failing tests for steroids that were fraudulently recorded as negatives.
Pavel Sozykin was the competitor banned by World Sailing.
On Monday, swimming’s world governing body FINA ruled out seven Russians including reigning world 100m breaststroke champion Yulia Efimova.
And a spokesperson for International Judo Federation (IJF) president Marius Vizer told Press Association Sport that the federation had written to the IOC to say all 11 of Russia’s proposed team should be considered eligible.
Russia’s track and field team is nearly entirely banned from the games under an earlier decision from the IAAF, leaving long jumper Darya Klishina as the only athlete eligible to represent Russian Federation out of 68 who were entered.
Kutsov’s place will go to Latvia’s Ruslan Nakonechnyi.
There are now a total of 22 Russian rowers who have been excluded.
A number of sports are yet to declare their position with regard to Russian athletes, although only weightlifting is likely to follow athletics’ example and issue a team ban. They include Ivan Podshivalov and Anastasia Karabelshchikova, who were excluded because they previously served doping bans, while Ivan Balandin from Russia’s men’s eight was implicated in the McLaren report, World Rowing said. The worldwide volleyball federation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The ASOIF statement suggests that it would have been better to act on the interim report of World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren, which alleged a massive cover-up of Russian doping cases, after the games in Rio.
“I think what the International Olympic Committee didn’t do is spend enough time to understand how big the problem is in Russia and how much covering up is happening in Russian sports”, he said.
Russian Federation initially selected 387 athletes for Rio, approximately 50 fewer than recent summer Games’, but has already lost nearly 90 of those in the individual vetting process that each sport is now undertaking.
But federations in archery, equestrian, shooting and tennis said they do not expect to take any such action.
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There were three manipulated tests from Russian shooters uncovered by McLaren but all three were eventually correctly processed.