Russian Federation announced that more than 250 athletes have been cleared to compete in the Rio Olympics next month even as President Vladimir Putin charged that Russia’s over 100 doping-related suspensions amounted to “discrimination”. “Short-sighted politicians haven’t left sport in peace”, though competition is meant to bring people and nations together, he said.
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Russia’s involvement in the Rio Games, however, has been a source of huge embarrassment to Putin and his country.
“They include Olympic champions and medal holders as well as less renowned athletes forbidden to compete in Rio”, Borzakovsky told Russian news agency, TASS.
As a result, the World Anti-Doping Agency launched a probe and vetted the information in the documentary.
In a news release issued on Wednesday, the ITTF said its investigation included individual tests outside the Russian anti-doping system.
Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, is confident problems in the Olympic Village will be resolved and said he expects Rio to put on a “great” Games when he arrived in Brazil on Wednesday.
The IOC said any Russian athletes with a previous doping suspension will be ineligible to compete at the Olympics.
The IAAF has rebuffed Russia’s latest bid to overturn the ban on most of its track and field team competing at the Olympics.
The IAAF, of course, had already made its judgement, accepting only the applications of long jumper Darya Klishina and 800m runner Yuliya Stepanova, who was subsequently blocked by the International Olympic Committee for having previously served a drugs ban.
An IAAF Task Force had set 44 specific criteria that needed to be met in order for the sanction to be lifted, which followed revelations of widespread state-sponsored doping within Russian track and field. We began calling for Russia’s outright ban from the Olympics in May, after the country’s former anti-doping chief exposed the state-run doping program at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Less than a month later, the Anti-Doping (Amendment) Bill of 2016 was passed and signed into law by President Uhuru Kenyatta who is said to have asked to see the results of the anti-doping process of the Rio 2016 team personally.
Thirty sports were alleged to have been implicated in the swapping of samples to hide positive tests, including summer ones not normally linked with doping like sailing, taekwondo and table tennis, and Paralympic sports.
Notably, pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic gold medallist and three-time world champion, has decided that she stands a better chance of adding to her illustrious resume by fighting Russia’s ban at the European Court of Human Rights than by competing at the Stars tournament.
The ICF also said that Russian Federation would not be allowed to enter boats in four events in which the excluded athletes would have raced.
The letter, however, got short shrift from the IAAF.
Russian entries to the Olympics must still be examined and upheld by an expert from the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
The International Table Tennis Federation has cleared the three Russian table tennis players who qualified for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics to compete.
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“CAS considered the appeals of the 67 athletes fully and rejected them. There are no grounds for further review”.
