Shlyakhtin said that the federation was not planning on holding any meets during Rio, rejecting the Cold War-era practice of holding alternative sporting events during the Olympic boycotts of 1980 and 1984.
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The violent clashes late Wednesday in Angra dos Reis, a coastal resort south of Rio, cast a shadow over final preparations for South America’s first Olympics, which start August 4.
Two-time Russian Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbaeva said on Thursday that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) confirmed the denial of her application to take part in 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.
“We are in any case alive and will compete no matter what”, national team coach Yury Borzakovsky, who gold in the 800 meters at the 2004 Athens Games, told AFP.
Kuchina is among the more than 100 athletes who have been barred from competing in the Rio Olympic Games by worldwide sports federations under sanctions which most Russian athletes consider unfair. “Walk with your head held high and proud… so that all these pseudo-clean foreign athletes understand they didn’t attack the right people”. You should show what you’re capable of, for yourself and for us. The IOC decided against a blanket ban and left it up to individual global sporting federations to approve Russian athletes.
“The IWF imposed mandatory provisional suspensions upon the athletes, who remain provisionally suspended in view of potential anti-doping rule violations”, it said. Unfortunately, they have not made an exception for me.
Says Isinbayeva: “The miracle didn’t happen”.
Some federations have taken a tough line, excluding many Russian team members from events such as rowing, canoeing and swimming. “They’re training and they’re ready to go”. The entire lifting team risks being banned from the Rio Games because of the large number of failures in retests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics.
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Russia had originally planned to send a 387-person team, but that has steadily been reduced as federations removed those who had previously served doping bans and those implicated in World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren’s report alleging a massive cover-up of failed drug tests. “In Russia there is not and never has been any state support for doping”.
Instead of an outright ban on Russian participation, as the World Anti-Doping Agency had urged, the IOC will impose a convoluted case-by-case review of Russian athletes, carried out by the 28 worldwide federations that govern each Olympic sport.
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Sergey Tetyukhin, the volleyball captain who won gold in London and will be Russia’s flag-bearer in Rio, similarly called for athletes to redouble their efforts in response to the doping scandal. “They disqualified us in the rudest way but we continue to compete”.
