Lithuania’s Olympic 100 metres breaststroke champion Ruta Meilutyte said a year ago, after being beaten by Efimova at the world championships, that she could not see the Russian as “a true honest competitor any more”.
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Seven Russian swimmers, including four-times breaststroke world champion Yulia Efimova, are ineligible to compete in the Rio Olympics, world swimming’s governing body FINA said on Monday.
Along with Efimova, Mikhail Dovgalyuk, Natalia Lovtcova and marathon swimmer Anastasia Krapivina have also been prohibited from representing Russian Federation at the Olympics.
Seventeen athletes have now been banned since the International Olympic Committee said individual federations should decide if Russians can compete.
You can not guarantee that any Russian athlete that competes in Rio will be clean even if they have been tested internationally.
Efomova’s agent has declared she will appeal her ban from Rio to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who have ruled twice previously that lifetime bans for a single doping offence are unlawful.
The 13 are likely to include athletes in swimming, cycling, weightlifting, wrestling and rowing.
The International Tennis Federation on Sunday night was the first to announce that the eight Russian athletes entered for its sport would be allowed to compete.
“It’s absolutely wrong to ban athletes who have not broken the rules”. Results of Russian tests will not be accepted following allegations of routine cover-ups at Moscow’s anti-doping laboratory.
From the start, the International Olympic Committee had seemed reluctant to issue a ban; it had never before excluded a country for doping and, unlike the IAAF, had no established legal precedent.
Zhukov said the IOC’s latest criteria violated the “principle of equality” because they only applied to Russian Federation, although he has previously ruled out legal action.
“While WADA fully respects the IOC’s autonomy to make decisions under the Olympic Charter, the approach taken and the criteria set forward will inevitably lead to a lack of harmonization, potential challenges, and lesser protection for clean athletes”, Niggli said in a statement on Sunday.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media that Putin had discussed the doping issue with his national security council.
However, part of the ban from the IOC extends to Russian Olympic officials, as it said that no member of the Ministry of Sport is welcome to participate in any form in Rio 2016.
Stepanov said the invitation to travel to Rio to watch the Games left them cold.
The only Russian track and field athlete now allowed to compete in Rio is long jumper Darya Klishina, who will do so under a neutral flag.
Russia has been rocked by doping scandals that saw its track and field team banned from competition, including Rio, and sparked calls led by WADA for all Russians to be barred until they cleaned up. They were listed as Tuiana Dashidorzhieva, Ksenia Perova and Inna Stepanova.
Both the World Anti-Doping Agency and track’s governing body, the IAAF, recommended she be allowed in the Olympics.
“No Russian archery athlete has received an adverse analytical finding”, it said, adding that it would submit its findings to the IOC. Isinbayeva has an “impeccable reputation, confirmed by a huge number of drugs tests by various anti-doping organizations”, he said. “It’s in the hands of the individual global federations now”.
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Meanwhile, volleyball player Alexander Markin told local media he had been dropped due to a positive test earlier this year for the banned substance meldonium, even though he had not been banned.
