“There is simply insufficient time remaining before the Rio Games and insufficient time and expertise available to the IFs within the 16 days remaining before the Games to accomplish the individualised analysis recommended by the International Olympic Committee”, it says. On one side stands the IAAF, the governing body of athletics, which argues that the staggering evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation that has built up in the past year means that no athlete inside the system can be trusted to be clean. “So I can not imagine it without Russian Federation”, he said.
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“Of course we hope for a CAS ruling in our favor”, Zhukov told state TV.
Regardless of how the various doping-related cases turn out, Zhukov said a Russian Olympic boycott was out of the question.
The IOC also said it would not organise or give patronage to any sports event in Russia, including the planned 2019 European Games, and that no member of the Russian Sports Ministry implicated in the report would be accredited for Rio. “I think that Russian Federation will never take part in any boycott”.
Earlier Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman said a meeting between Putin and Russia’s Olympic athletes, previously scheduled for Thursday, would no longer take place.
The Soviet Union boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, retaliating for the US -led boycott of the 1980 Games in Moscow that followed the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
And today the Russian Olympic Committee has announced a 387-strong team, which is down on the nearly 450 they have been taking to the last few Games, but considerably more than many observers will be comfortable with in Rio.
The IOC – which faces a race against the clock to reach a final decision on Russians in Rio – said it “will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice”.
“There may or may not be clean Russian athletes, but if you look at the [latest] report it is pretty clear it was endemic”.
If Cas does uphold the ban, most observers expect it will increase the pressure on the International Olympic Committee to consider a broader ban on all Russians at the Olympics.
McLaren found that at least 11 positive tests from rowers had been wrongly recorded as negative by the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, and FISA has already disqualified Russia’s entry in the men’s quadruple sculls from Rio because of a doping violation in May.
The letter also warned the IOC that a plan to allow global federations from each sport to separately decide whether to allow Russian athletes to compete – which is favoured by some members of the IOC’s executive board – was not feasible.
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Both the Court of Arbitration for Sports (CAS) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will be meeting on Thursday of this week.
