Two-hundred and seventy-one Russian athletes will compete in Rio despite the release of the McLaren Report documenting widespread state-run doping practices.
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Despite it’s failure to deliver on certain infrastructure promises, and it’s pledge to clean up the city’s heavily polluted Guanabara Bay, Bach maintained that the fist Olympic games to be staged in South America has helped to transform Rio de Janeiro.
“Although we are heartbroken, we wish to clarify that we have from the beginning chosen to not follow a judicial path”, the couple said in a statement.
“We have good news for supporters of the Russian team”.
“We believe that in exercising this discretion to deny Yuliya a place in the competition, it sends a message that the World Anti-Doping Code and the values of Olympism are merely words on a page”, they said.
The IOC EB also ruled that any Russian athlete that had ever been sanctioned for doping, even if they had served the sanction, would not be eligible to compete in Rio.
McLaren, who was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to investigate the claims of a Russian whistleblower, said his findings were never meant to prove individual doping cases.
Russian news agency R-Sport reported that 29 Russian swimmers and canoeing world champion Andrey Kraitor would also be allowed to compete.
Some Ukrainian team members said the ruling was weighed against the Russians because the International Olympic Committee allowed United States athletes who had previously served time out for doping to compete in Rio.
The Panel lists three members and they are: Ugur Erdener, the head of the IOC Medical Commission; Claudia Bokel, an IOC Executive Board Member and the Chair of the IOC Athletes’ Commission; and Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., an IOC Executive Board Member.
Stepanova still will not. He explained: “The innocent athletes would have to be considered as collateral damage”. “This has been a very hard time for our Russian athletes, who all have clean anti-doping records under both human and equine testing regimes, so we are very happy to have confirmation today from the International Olympic Committee that all five are now declared eligible to compete”.
“The consistently cowardly manner in which the IOC deals with Russian Federation is no more than pure cynicism”, she charged, adding that “lies and cover-ups are becoming the norm while the Olympic charter and good sense is being turned into laughing stocks”.
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A change.org petition requesting the International Olympic Committee let Stepanova compete has more than 253,000 signatures.
