Russian has been at the centre of a new doping storm after an independent investigator, Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, said in a report that there had been widespread state-backed doping in Russia.
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Fina issued a statement saying that both swimmers were implicated in the independent report that found evidence of a state-backed system of covering up doping in Russian Federation.
“They were named in the McLaren report but there was no reason for them not to be allowed to swim”, Zhukov said.
Two Russian swimmers have been told they CAN compete in Rio 2016.
“We will meet with International Olympic Committee representatives to discuss the outcome for this situation”.
But FINA, the Russian swimming federation and the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) have not confirmed that the swimmers have been cleared to compete.
The FINA Bureau initially did not include Morozov and Lobintsev on the list of eligible competitors, in respect of the IOC’s ruling that nobody implicated in the WADA IP Report may be accredited for entry in the Olympic Games.
The two swimmers then launched an appeal against the ruling banning them from the Rio Olympics.
Lobintsev and US-based Morozov were part of Russia’s bronze-medal winning 4x100m freestyle team at the London Games four years ago, while Lobintsev also won silver in the 4x200m freestyle relay at Beijing in 2008.
Unlike Efimova, Morozov and Lobintsev have never been suspended for failing a drugs test but were named in association with the “disappearing positive methodology system” in which samples were illegally switched for clean ones.
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With concerns raised in the wake of revelations that drug test samples were tampered with during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, Fina said it had re-tested samples that Russian Rio hopefuls had given at the World Championships in Kazan, Russia, last year.
