Russian Olympic Committee President Alexander Zhukov said Wednesday he expected between 272 and 280 Russian athletes would be cleared.
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“There must be a misunderstanding”, the embassy said in an email on Friday afternoon (NZT).
The IOC sent out a statement on Monday to the 28 federations that run the summer Olympics sports to ease the way that the report by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) should be interpreted, officials said.
The Russian team were banned last week after the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said “the integrity of weightlifting has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians”.
Also Thursday, the IOC’s rule barring Russian athletes with prior doping sanctions from competing in the games was rejected as “unenforceable” by an Olympic sports arbitration panel.
They will be joined by eight Russian tennis players, 18 shooters, 11 judokas and Russian golfer Maria Verchenova, the sports’ global federations said.
“The majority of the sports have been admitted in full”, Zhukov told reporters on Thursday.
The IOC had tried to ban cheats from the Games in 2011 with its own “Osaka rule” – a suspension from the next Olympics for anyone with a six-month doping ban or longer – but that was also thrown out by CAS at the time.
Sports were given individual responsibility over banning teams or competitors from the Olympics in the wake of the McLaren Report, which exposed evidence of state-sponsored doping inside Russian Federation.
Before the Games get under way it is the host nation’s turn to take centre stage as millions around the world watch the opening ceremony that will showcase its history, diversity and music.
Russian Federation has been at the centre of a new doping storm after an independent investigator, Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, said in a report for WADA that there had been widespread state-backed doping in Russian Federation.
These are the first athletes to be cleared by the panel.
Bach pointed to the near-unanimous support he received from members over the International Olympic Committee decision, with only Britain’s Adam Pengilly voting against.
CAS rejected the athletes’ appeal to be granted direct entry into the games, saying it was now up to the worldwide rowing and swimming federations to decide whether to let them in or not.
But he took a swipe at the total ban on Russia’s track and field team, which has robbed athletes like pole vault world record-holder Yelena Isinbayeva and 110m hurdles world champion Sergey Shubenkov of the chance to compete. “We had to respect basic principles of natural law”.
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Speaking in Rio on Thursday, British sports minister Tracey Crouch said the International Olympic Committee had mishandled the crisis but Bach told a packed press conference that he was confident he had made the right call and “could look every athlete in the eye with a clear conscience”.
