Other sports – including rowing, wrestling, modern pentathlon and sailing – have banned one or more Russians from competing in Rio de Janeiro, but not all of the country’s eligible athletes.
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Russia’s sports minister said today that the national team to compete in the Rio Olympics starting next week so far has 266 competitors, although decisions were still pending on several athletes.
In Budapest, Hungary, the International Weightlifting Federation said the “integrity of the weightlifting sport has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians”. “Therefore an appropriate sanction was applied in order to preserve the status of the sport”.
The International Olympic Committee resisted a blanket ban on Russia following the most recent explosive report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), who detailed an elaborate doping scheme in Russian sports orchestrated by the government. The IAAF banned Russia’s track and field team.
Two female weightlifters – Tatiana Kashirina and Anastasiia Romanova – were withdrawn by the Russian federation for earlier doping offenses.
He said his office was informed of the problems only last week, despite a series of weekly meetings between his staff and the organizing committee.
The 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro are scheduled for August 5-21.
He was banned from next week’s competition in Rio because of a failed drug test at the 2006 World Junior Championship.
Felix, who hurt her right ankle during training this spring, was at less than 100 percent earlier this month at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Stepanova has rejected an invitation to attend the Olympics as a guest, with the International Olympic Committee arguing her drugs-tainted past made her ineligible to compete in Rio.
The IWF described the doping results as “extremely shocking and disappointing”.
Aside from athletics, where all bar Florida-based Darya Klishina have been banned from competing at Rio, weightlifting is the only other sport to exclude all Russians after each individual governing body was asked to make a call on a sport-by-sport basis.
The 19 were excluded because World Rowing said they had not been tested often enough by reliable global authorities. “The miracle didn’t happen”.
The IOC’s ruling executive board, meeting Saturday for the final time before the opening of the games next Friday, said the panel will decide on the entry of Russian athletes whose names have been forwarded to compete by their worldwide sports federations and approved by an independent arbitrator.
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There was good news for Russia on Friday when the Russian Taekwondo Union said it had received notification from the World Taekwondo Federation that all three of its entries could compete in Rio.
