Russian Olympics suffered a big blow after sports’ highest tribunal, the Court of Arbitration of Sports, upheld the ban sanctioned after several members of Russia’s track and field team were tested positive in doping test about nine months ago. Those athletes who are proven to have doped should be banned from competitions.
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“Should (Russia) be suspended they will have 21 days to appeal the decision”, the statement adds. “But I sincerely hope that the athletes themselves are made the primary consideration, and that all other issues, from technical to political, come after, if the athletes themselves are innocent”. “It is our federation’s instinctive desire to include, not exclude”. Russia’s Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko called the CAS decision “politicised” and illegal.
Olympic bodies and athletes sign up to CAS jurisdiction, and its rulings have very rarely been overturned.
The former French Olympian noted that he does not know what to expect from the IOC’s decision, which will make its decision Sunday.
I raced many Russians during my career, one thing that always stuck out for me was the high turnover of sprinters.
In the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the U.S. cycling team was under the scanner for alleged doping but the International Olympic Committee didn’t bar the U.S. An Olympics without Russian Federation would be tragic.
That came following the publication of the McLaren report, which found that doping of Russian athletes had been “directed [and] controlled” at state level and prompted the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to call for a blanket ban.
“We are also urgently following up on McLaren’s recommendation for 19 samples from the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Games to be sent for further analysis, having been identified as part of the sample-swapping regime in place during the Games”.
“We have still a little bit to work on for Rio, a little bit of sharpening up, and there are a few more key sessions I would like to get under my belt, then after that is the Olympics”. Isinbayeva was one of the 68 Russian athletes to appeal the IOC’s ruling at CAS, insisting that she is clean.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach (pictured) said: “The new reanalysis once again shows the commitment of the International Olympic Committee in the fight against doping”. The committee did not name the athletes or say what countries they were from. “You’re not welcome, ‘” Pound said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press.
“Why is the International Olympic Committee not acting in the face of incontrovertible evidence of government interference?” he said.
“Yet I don’t feel any support on the part of foreign athletes anyway, because they’re praying for the absence of Russian competitors from the Rio Games”.
But for the IAAF and its president Lord Coe, the verdict is a victory and a vindication of the process it started in November.
“Where we have systematic cheating, we also must have systematic punishment”, he said.
Clearly, a potential ban on Russian Federation from the 2016 Summer Olympics is only the beginning.
That led the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to recommend extending the Rio Games ban to all Russian athletes and not just in track and field.
She had been aiming for her fifth Olympics and was a leading voice in calling for the ban to be overturned, even speaking at Tuesday’s CAS hearing. Both men deny the accusations and the US Anti-Doping Association are still investigating those claims.
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And there is set to be more bad news on the way with more samples from Beijing and London – specifically aimed at medal winners – set to be conducted throughout and beyond the Rio Games.
