Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said Friday that 272 of the country’s original 387-strong team had been approved by worldwide sports federations to compete in Rio. It said the punishment was an “appropriate sanction” to “preserve the status of the sport”.
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In the continuing fallout of a scathing report outlining egregious and systematic Russian doping violations, the entire Russian weightlifting team has been banned from the 2016 Rio Olympics. Those Games were overshadowed by the widespread use of doping, however, with no less than 10 weightlifters returning positive tests, according to Reuters (via Sky Sports).
“The (IOC) decision has resulted in a deluge of requests to provide information to the IFs (international federations); Russian national federations; the Russian Olympic Committee; the Russian Paralympic Committee and individual Russian athletes”.
Felix, who hurt her right ankle during training this spring, was at less than 100 percent earlier this month when she ran in the U.S. Olympic trials.
“The [Russian Weightlifting] Federation will do everything in its power to rehabilitate us, but it is impossible to do it before the Olympics; there is no time to do anything”, Russian weightlifter Aleksey Lovchev told RT, commenting on the IWF decision.
The IWF Executive Board carefully studied question of the participation of Russian weightlifters in the Olympic Games Rio.
“We are cautious as neither the IWF nor the International Olympic Committee have ratified the disqualification of Podobedova after last month’s news”, Fedehalter said in a statement. Even for those “clean” Russian athletes who do win medals, they will forever have an asterisk next to their names in the minds of spectators and sports historians. I feel sorry for those people that haven’t had that chance to hear their national anthem and be on that podium where they belong, deserve to be.
Anything close to that figure would make a mockery of the IOC’s privately-held view that the majority of Russian competitors would be denied entry to the Games following its refusal to issue a blanket ban.
“They do not want the truth”, added Stepanov, who says he first provided information to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in 2010.
SPANISH weight-lifter Lidia Valentin hopes to be awarded an Olympic gold medal from London 2012 after the athletes that finished above her all failed drug tests when their samples were reanalysed. The implication of athletes in the IP Report has been made ineligibility criteria by the International Olympic Committee; no further action or decision is required from the IWF in this regard.
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Team GB will have two weightlifters in Rio, 17-year-old Rebekah Tiler and Sonny Webster, and the latter insisted on Friday that anyone who has tested positive in the past should not be allowed to compete at the Olympics.
