Officially ten Russian competitors were sidelined from the Rio Games on Monday over past doping offences with two weightlifters and a freestyle wrestler also banned, joining the 67 track and field athletes already barred from global competition by the worldwide Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF).
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Walker Jared Tallent, who has been impacted more by Russian doping than any other Australian athlete, took a contrary view to Australia’s most senior Olympic officials, labeling the IOC decision as “gutless”.
“We’ve taken the decision to appeal to CAS”.
“They are competing cleanly, trying to make the Olympics”.
Efomova’s agent has declared she will appeal her ban from Rio to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who have ruled twice previously that lifetime bans for a single doping offence are unlawful.
The Budapest-based IWF said “some points might lead to confusion” regarding the International Olympic Committee ruling giving individual sports federations the responsibility of deciding who can compete in Rio.
Either type of ban would likely trigger legal appeals with the clock ticking down to the August 5 start of the Games.
Russia has been under scrutiny since last November when the World Anti-Doping Agency, or WADA, published allegations of organized cheating among athletes, coaches and officials in Russian track and field.
The country’s sports officials eventually acknowledged a culture of cheating that dates back to the Communist era, when Soviet and East German athletes took part in state-sponsored doping.
But a subsequent WADA investigation found continued resistance to testing.
It also said all Russians with doping pasts were ineligible for the Games.
They have declared their support for the IOC’s controversial decision, which left the extent of participation of Russian athletes at the Games in the hands of the IFs.
The IOC’s ruling followed recent statements in which Bach seemed to indicate his preference for individual justice to a blanket ban. It said it would establish a “pool of Russian eligible athletes”. A similar International Olympic Committee measure, known as the Osaka Rule, which would have prohibited any athletes who had received doping bans from competing in the subsequent Olympics, was declared invalid by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Russian archers have been targeted for additional testing, both in and out of competition, since the report was released, the federation said.
Vitaly Mutko, the Russian sports minister, called the standards “very tough” but added that he believes “the majority of our team will comply”.
As if to set an example, the International Olympic Committee announced it had denied an application from Russian runner Yulia Stepanova, who had helped investigators uncover cheating in her country but had been previously sanctioned for doping.
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Stepanov, who previously worked for Russia’s anti-doping agency, and his wife helped expose the doping scandal which threatened to exclude Russian Federation from the Olympics.
