GETTYPutin has denied the reports claiming the state put athletes like Stepanova through dopingWill Russia be at the Olympics?
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It also confirmed professor Richard McLaren would continue his investigative work into doping and “identify athletes that might have benefited from manipulation of the doping control process to hide positive doping tests”.
McLaren’s findings included that Russian Federation was tainting their athletes’ urine samples at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, and that their doping program had polluted a combined 28 sports from both the Winter and Summer Olympics between 2011-2015. That means Russian tests can not be taken into consideration.
This means that the IAAF ruling on Russia’s track and field athletics team still stands, and the entire team, with the exception of long-jumper Daria Klishina, will be banned from the games.
The New Zealand Olympic Committee underscores the importance of protecting clean athletes and upholding integrity in sport.
Canadian ice-hockey Olympian Hayley Wickenheiser said the decision was a failure by the committee to “honor the world’s clean athletes”.
De Pencier and the top USA anti-doping official were also critical of the International Olympic Committee for not allowing Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova to compete in Rio.
The IOC also said Russia is barred from entering for the Rio Games any athlete who has ever been sanctioned for doping, while global federations will also analyze an athlete’s testing history.
However, individual Russian athletes had hoped they might be allowed to compete under a neutral flag if they can prove they are clean.
One user called the International Olympic Committee a “disgrace” asking what lengths must a country go to to be banned from the Olympics.
Russia’s track and field athletes have already been banned by the IAAF and other federations now face a race against time to establish those Russians who meet the criteria set out to allow them to compete in Brazil.
Individual sports federations will have primary responsibility for determining every Russian athlete’s eligibility for Rio.
Revelations by Stepanova, a former drugs cheat, and her husband helped expose the massive doping problem in her country.
“If I all of a sudden started worrying about (people doping) and not worrying about what I was doing, then it would drain my energy”, said Le May Doan, who last competed in the 2002 Olympics, where she also heard rumours of athletes doping.
Fourteen national anti-doping agencies – including the US, Germany and Japan – as well as several national Olympic committees had demanded Russia’s exclusion from Rio.
Russian pole vaulter and two-time Olympic gold medalist Yelena Isinbaeva was quoted by TASS as saying that a complete ban on Russian athletes would have become a “huge scandal”. The United States led a political boycott of the Moscow Games of 1980 and the Soviet Union led an Eastern Bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later.
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“I also feel a little surprised that more athletes are not more vocal about this, especially those with a powerful voice in Olympic sport”, he said.
