English edition of Asharq Al-Awsat – the world’s premier pan-Arab daily.
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The Russian contingent has shown “worthy performance” during the Rio Olympic Games in spite of being cut by a third and thus deprived of showing all its capacities, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.
“I’d like to address our Paralympic team: we will support you and will hold a special competition where you will show your skills”, Putin said. The prizes and compensation will be equivalent to those at the Rio Paralympic Games, he said.
CAS on Tuesday rejected an appeal against a decision to bar all Russian athletes from the Rio Paralympic Games, set to take place September 7-18.
Putin, who was addressing Russian athletes returning from Rio, also said that global anti-doping organisations were subject to political pressure.
Russian Federation was suspended on Aug.7 over what International Paralympic Committee president Philip Craven called a “medals over morals” culture with evidence of state-sponsored doping.
“I used to say this before … and I still believe that these global anti-doping structures … should be rid of political pressure”, Putin added.
Putin also lashed at worldwide sports and anti-doping bodies for creating obstacles to the participation of all Russian Olympians and for disqualification of the Russian Paralympic team, saying that humanistic fundamentals have been “blatantly trampled by politics”, reports Xinhua. “This is absolutely a political decision, and we do not understand how an organization that should be engaged in the development of Paralympic sport can make such a decision”, Mutko told reporters.
The committee’s president, Vladimir Lukin, declined to elaborate on the legal steps it was pondering to contest Tuesday’s rejection by the Court of Arbitration for Sport of Russia’s appeal against its suspension.
With Russia’s track and field team banned from this summer’s Olympics, the nation still finished fourth in the medal standings, behind the US, Great Britain and China.
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Putin said the decision to bar Russian athletes, including those who had not tested positive for any banned substances, was a vivid manifestation “of how the humanistic foundations of sport and Olympism are shamelessly flouted by politics”.
