Ukraine’s sports minister on Friday banned his Olympic team from talking to the Russian media while in Rio de Janeiro for the 2016 Games.
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When asked after the news conference by CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh why the announcement was made now, Zhukov said: “This is just information for this moment, it’s not final information”.
The Stepanovas said they believed the IOC’s focus on Yulia’s past doping sanction shifted the spotlight away from the real issue, which is that the IOC took no action against Russian Federation for punishing her for being a credible whistleblower by refusing to put her on Russia’s Olympic team.
Another five athletes – three track cyclists, a wrestler and a canoeist – will know by Friday if they can take part in the Rio Games.
A spokesman for the Russian Olympic Committee said Efimova was already in Rio.
There are 10,500 athletes from 207 nations in Rio ready to compete in 31 sports and the curtain raiser in the Maracana Stadium, despite budget cuts forced upon organisers, will still be an eye-catching spectacle.
There are a number of cases still pending, meaning we may yet see more Russians cleared to compete. “No athletes from any country… had the rules changed to bar those previously guilty of doping”.
“The IOC Decision deprives the Russian athletes of the presumption of innocence and rather establishes a presumption of guilt”, CAS said in a news release.
“I hope that he will not regret his decision about Russian athletes because as you can say, what goes around comes around”, Popov said of Coe earlier.
“They should’ve shown stronger leadership and banned the entire Russian delegation”, Konrad said.
Vladimir Morozov and Nikita Lobintsev had been banned after being implicated in the Richard McLaren report on state-run doping in Russian Federation.
While all Russian weightlifters have been banned, all of the country’s boxers have been allowed to compete.
In the other Group A match in Brasilia, Iraq and Denmark also played to a scoreless draw, leaving all four teams tied.
NOVAK DJOKOVIC will face the 2009 U.S. Open champion, Juan Martin del Potro, in the first round of the Olympics in a rematch of the 2012 bronze medal match.
“On top of all that, Russian athletes are going through additional testing which is taking place at the Olympic village”.
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It was the latest in a series of last-minute doping-related rulings on Russian competitors that have turned the build-up to Rio into a legal obstacle course.
