The Russian embassy in the capital Brasilia issued a statement saying that “no representative of the Russian consulate general in Rio de Janeiro was involved in an attempted assault ending with the death of the suspect”.
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All 11 Russian boxers who qualified for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics have been given the all clear to compete at the Games following confirmation from the IOC, the International Boxing Association (AIBA) said on Thursday.
Canoeist Andre Kraitor was also put back in the team after winning an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Thursday.
“We believe that the IOC’s focus on Yuliya’s past sanction for doping shifts the spotlight away from the real issue, which is that the IOC took no action against Russian Federation for punishing Yuliya for being a credible whistle-blower by refusing to put her on Russia’s Olympic team”, the statement continued.
“It’s going to be a lovely ceremony, very Brazilian, very Olympics, and very sportsmanlike”, Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada told a press conference on Thursday.
Kazakhstan’s very successful weightlifting program is in tatters, with four Olympic gold medal winners suspended from Rio when re-tests of samples taken at the 2008 and 2012 games showed signs of doping, EurasiaNet.org reports.
Russia, accused of operating a huge state-orchestrated doping system, will now have its smallest Olympic team for more than a century for the Games which start on Friday.
Organizers of the Winter Olympics in 2022 in Beijing are promising that everything is already on track for the country’s second Olympics, building on experience from the Summer Games in 2008. The final decision on the number of Russian athletes is accepted by an independent commission of three International Olympic Committee members.
These are the first athletes to be cleared by the panel.
Foreign dignitaries began arriving in Rio on Thursday, with French president Francois Hollande lending his support to Paris s bid to host the 2024 Games.
The IOC allowed most of the team to compete despite a recommendation of a total ban by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), after its investigators found evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
A number of Russian athletes were also banned from swimming, rowing and canoeing, although there was no blanket ban on competitors from the country in these sports.
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Stepanova has been excluded from competing as a neutral athlete by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) due to a previously served sanction for doping.
