Eventing: – Aleksandr Markov and the horse Kurfurstin; Andrey Mitin with Gurza; and Evgeniya Ovchinnikova and Orion.
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Olympic officials later made a decision to let the worldwide sports federations decide which individual athletes could compete in Rio after a review of their doping records.
Isinbayeva can no doubt count on the votes from Russia’s diminished team in Rio but she may struggle for support elsewhere, given her high-profile campaign against Russia’s punishment for systemic and widespread doping.
“Like it or not, the International Olympic Committee has chose to absolve Russia for designing and operating a doping programme that enabled its athletes to cheat other competitors and to ensure that doped Russian athletes at the Sochi Games in 2014 would not get caught”, Pound wrote.
Individual athletes can appeal the IOC’s decision in last-minute challenges.
“It is hard to reconcile this with (the IOC’s) stated aim to provide the athletes with an opportunity to rebut the principle of presumption of guilt and to recognise natural justice”, a CAS statement said.
“The good news has come just in time as the Eventing starts tomorrow morning with the first horse inspection at 8.30!”
The 271 clearances made official by late Thursday represented about 70 percent of the 387 Russian athletes originally selected by the country to participate in the Olympics, with the bulk of the absentees being track and field athletes.
He insisted the decision was not political.
“I, for one, am hugely disappointed by the IOC’s lack of resolve in dealing with proven Government-sponsored cheating”.
The decision was announced Thursday with respect to the appeals of one swimmer, Yulia Efimova, and two rowers, Anastasia Karabelshikova and Ivan Podshivalov. “I don’t want to get into a slanging match with the International Olympic Committee about the way they’ve handled it”, McLaren told the Guardian newspaper. We hope that even more will join that petition under https://www.change.org/u/44171830 in order to show the International Olympic Committee that their decision is wrong and unfair. “This is why we have taken measures here against the people being implicated”.
Russia, who finished fourth on the London 2012 Olympic medals table and have topped the table seven times, will have their smallest team since 1912 at the Rio Games, which open on Friday.
“I wouldn’t put anything in that report that I didn’t have evidence of and wouldn’t meet the criminal standard in any court around the world”, McLaren responded to the Guardian. Yesterday an interview was published of Jack Robertson, the former head investigator of WADA, who is a man of tremendous integrity.
“Starting with Rio the sanctioning of doping cases at the Olympic Games will not be done anymore via the IOC, but it will be handled independently by the Court of Arbitration for Sport”, the IOC president added. She was entitled to that, but she took the full ban, and never once requested from me that it should be lessened. “Today there is no cleaner and more regulated team than Russia’s”.
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This ethically warped performance by the panjandrums of the global Olympic “movement” casts a dark shadow indeed over the Rio proceedings. More so than any statement of the IOC “Ethics Commission”, Mr. Robertson’s views restore our faith that some in the Olympic Movement truly do embody the highest ethical and moral principles that the IOC seeks to promote.
