The Australian Olympic Committee has confirmed a fire in its team’s building for the Rio Games prompted an evacuation of staff and athletes.
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Two Russian swimmers filed an appeal Saturday against their exclusion from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, claiming the ban is “invalid” and “unenforceable”.
The International Weightlifting Federation banned all eight Russian contenders – five men and three women – entered for Rio.
But McLaren’s report said there was state-organised doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and other major global events in Russian Federation.
Weightlifting and athletics are the only two sports to have excluded all Russian competitors.
“We would like to highlight the extremely shocking and disappointing statistics regarding the Russian weightlifters”, read a statement from the International Weightlifting Federation. Kashirina won silver at the 2012 Olympic Games in London, is a four-time world champion and holds the snatch and clean and jerk world records.
The IOC executive is to meet on Saturday and Sunday to discuss the crisis. The full International Olympic Committee meets from Monday.
The ban is part of a large-scale doping scandal involving Russian athletes across many sports, including the track and field team.
Citing major breaches that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) described at a Russian laboratory, chemist Francisco Radler said the lab must ensure that cheating, through infiltration by outsiders or other efforts to manipulate testing, is “impossible”.
IOC President Thomas Bach, however, announced on Sunday that Russian athletes, with the exception of field and track competitors, were allowed to participate in the 2016 Summer Olympics based on individual approval of each respective worldwide sports federation or association.
Reedie had led calls for a blanket ban on Russian Federation over the doping.
The federations of boxing, golf, gymnastics, handball and taekwondo still have to confirm their decisions.
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“This panel will decide whether to accept or reject that final proposal”, said IOC spokesman Mark Adams, while specifying that it is to include Juan Antonio Samaranch, former IOC president from 1980 to 2001; Uğur Erdener, the head of the IOC Medical Commission; and Claudia Bokel, IOC Executive Board Member and Chair of the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
