Olympic leaders stopped short Sunday of imposing a complete ban on Russia from the Rio de Janeiro Games, leaving individual global sports federations to decide which athletes should be cleared to compete.
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Rowing hero and two-time Olympic gold medallist Cracknell tweeted: “Bottled it – IOC passing the buck to individual federation sports on whether to allow Russian athletes to compete in Rio 2016”.
The International Olympic Committee looked long and hard at a potential blanket ban of all Russian athletes from the 2016 Rio Olympics following a wide spread doping scandal.
The ban was upheld following an IAAF Council meeting in June, but after that meeting it was announced that due to a rule amendment, Russians may still be able to compete at the Rio Olympic Games and other worldwide competitions as “neutral” athletes.
“It is a specific challenge for our sportsmen but I am absolutely sure that the majority of the Russian team will meet the criteria”.
Rutherford, who will defend his Olympic title at the Games, which begin on August 5, believes the IOC has tried to satisfy everyone but ended up creating a “messy” situation.
The damning report said Russia’s sports ministry directed a vast doping programme with support from the state intelligence agency that saw thousands of tainted urine samples destroyed or swapped for clean ones.
“The decision was reached after hard debates”, but it allows clean Russian athletes to prove their rights to compete in Rio, he said.
Fourth, the IFs to examine the inofrmation contained in the Independent Person (IP) Report, and for such goal seek from World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) the names of athletes and National Federations (NFs) implicated.
The IOC said it needed to seek out legal path to a collective ban after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday rejected the appeal by Russian track and field federation and 67 athletes against their Olympic exclusion. And Vladimir Putin’s Russian Federation is a sports powerhouse, a huge country seeking to reaffirm its status on the world stage, and a major player in the Olympic movement.
The Australian government voiced disappointment on Monday with the IOC’s failure to ban Russian Federation from the Rio Olympics, warning a “suspicion of compromised integrity” now hung over the Games.
Yuliya Stepanova, who is married to an employee of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency, is one of just two athletes with ties to Russia who were eligible to compete in track and field.
Around “80 percent” of the Russian team regularly undergoes worldwide testing of the kind specified in the IOC criteria, he adds.
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He told the Guardian: “I would nearly have been happier if the decision had been a bullish refusal to act in any way”.
