Russia’s tennis team will be allowed to compete in the upcoming Rio Olympics 2016 after the International Tennis Federation (ITF) backed the International Olympic Council’s (IOC) decision not to impose a blanket ban on the country’s athletes.
Advertisement
The IOC verdict comes after World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA)’s Independent Commission urged a ban on Russian athletes from all global sports competitions.
The IOC said it would accept the entry only of those Russian athletes who meet certain conditions set out for the 28 worldwide federations to apply.
The decision comes after an independent report found damning evidence of state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Olympics – prompting the World Anti-Doping Agency to call for a Rio ban.
The AOC endorsed the decision not to apply a blanket ban on all Russian athletes, with team leader Kitty Chiller saying, “The IOC has set down a very strict criteria and the Russians still need to clear the high hurdles to be able to participate in Rio”.
Because of that report, the IOC will only accept Russian competitors at the Rio Games whose worldwide federations have approved them.
An IOC ethics commission also ruled that 800m runner Yuliya Stepanova, who turned whistleblower on doping in Russian athletics, could not go to Rio even as a neutral.
The Russian olympic team has escaped an all-out ban from Rio 2016 in the wake of the country’s doping scandal.
Niggli also expressed disappointment that an International Olympic Committee ethics commission ruled that whistleblower athlete Yulia Stepanova could not go to Rio, even competing as a neutral.
Any Russians who has served a doping ban will not be eligible for the start of next month’s Olympics. However, the International Olympic Committee decided against the blanket ban on Sunday. But many International Olympic Committee members were said to be reluctant to ban a country completely for the first time over doping.
The IOC was “guided by a fundamental rule of the Olympic Charter to protect clean athletes and the integrity of sport”, according to an IOC release.
Clean individual “athletes shouldn’t be sanctioned for the system”, IOC President Thomas Bach said on the call with reporters.
“In a nutshell, the presumption of innocence can not be applied to them, there is insufficient time for hearings with the Games so close”.
“The decision of the IOC to not take matters into their own hands but pass on the hot potato to International Federations shows a lack of will to back the core principles of their organisation with hard decisions”, he said.
Advertisement
Athletes who have ever tested positive for drug use will be barred, it said.
