Russia’s top Olympic official expects a final decision by Sunday on whether the entire Russian team will be banned from next month’s games in Rio de Janeiro over allegations of state-sponsored doping.
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The agency did not provide details of the offenses.
Regardless of how the various doping-related cases turn out, Zhukov said a Russian Olympic boycott was out of the question.
Weightlifting is also in the grip of a doping crisis after many medalists from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics failed retests of their samples.
“These boycotts just lead to a breakup of the Olympic movement”, he said.
He added that Russian President Vladimir Putin has not taken any decisions on Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko.
Yesterday, the International Olympic Committee stated they were exploring legal options regarding a “collective ban” of Russian athletes against the “right to individual justice”, with a verdict having been postponed to the weekend.
It also said it would be reviewing all testing of Russian rowers since 2011 and asking the International Olympic Committee for guidance on the possible reallocation of Rio slots to other nations, as the official deadline of July 18 has passed. “Furthermore, the Investigation reveals that State oversight and directed control of the Moscow laboratory in processing and covering up urine samples of Russian athletes was applied to all sport disciplines whose urine samples were being analyzed by the Moscow laboratory.” said WADA’s President Sir Craig Reedie in a statement.
It also recommended that IFs from sports implicated in the McLaren report consider their responsibilities under the World Anti-Doping Code with regard to their Russian National Federations.
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 global rowing federation said Wednesday it was investigating whether Russian rowers’ places at the Rio Olympics could be reallocated to athletes from other countries “if there would be a blanket ban on the Russian team or any other ban”.
World rowing’s bosses also asked WADA to hand over all of McLaren’s evidence that relates to rowing and hold a meeting with all the affected federations once they too had been given the relevant evidence.
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“But if you look at the McLaren report it is pretty clear it was endemic, it was a government instituted programme and that every doping test was scanned to make sure there wasn’t a positive – and if it happened to be a Russian athlete who had a positive test it disappeared and it was replaced by a negative test”.
