“They include Olympic champions and medal holders as well as less renowned athletes forbidden to compete in Rio”, Borzakovsky told Russian news agency, TASS.
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Brazil’s suspended President Dilma Rousseff says she’ll skip the opening ceremony of the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games on August 5.
Rousseff’s impeachment trial is expected to conclude in the Senate following the end of the games.
The International Fencing Federation (FIE) announced on Wednesday that it made a decision to clear all Russian fencers, who applied to participate in the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Brazil next month.
Fencers, triathletes and table tennis players became the latest team of Russians to be cleared to compete in the Olympics by the governing bodies of their sports ahead of the Moscow ceremony, but the IAAF rejected a bid by the bulk of the track and field team to be reinstated.
There was good news for Russian Federation as its judo and shooting teams – comprised 11 and 18 athletes respectively – received approval to compete from their sports’ global governing bodies.
Worldwide sports federations must now remove any athlete previously banned for doping or who was implicated in a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency that accused Russia of a mass cover-up of failed drug tests.
“On the other hand it gives athletes the possibility to show, by clearing very high hurdles, they weren’t involved in the system”. We have seen them also here.
The track team did, however, attend the ceremonial farewell with Putin on Wednesday, when the Russian president branded restrictions on Russia as “pure discrimination”. “Voleyball player Sergei Tetyukhin, who is a great sportsman and an Olympic champion, will be given the honour”, Isinbayeva wrote on her Instagram page.
According to the details, the commission claimed it had found evidence that Russia’s Sports Ministry and the Center for the Training of Russian National Teams and the Federal Security Service had covered up a doping program in Russian sports.
Continuing his address, Putin told his audience “your colleagues from other sports powers realize that the value of their medals will be different”, because “this victory will have a different taste – or no taste at all”.
Efimova’s agent has said he is preparing an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and the Russian Canoe Federation’s general secretary Irina Sirayeva said that the five banned athletes could follow suit.
More than 100 Russians have so far been banned from the Games, including track and field stars Yelena Isinbayeva and Sergey Shubenkov, who were among those meeting Putin at the Kremlin.
Only US-based long jumper Darya Klishina has been deemed eligible by the IAAF.
CAS opened two temporary offices in Rio on Tuesday and they will operate for the duration of the Olympics, for what promises to be a busy time for the court as Russian competitors learn whether sports federations will allow them to take part.
The IFF says 197 tests taken from Russian athletes in 35 countries over the last two years were all negative. “It consists of all 16 fencers who have qualified for the Games, plus the four P-accreditation (reserve) athletes”.
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The International Olympic Committee (IOC) sparked fierce criticism on Sunday when it resisted a blanket ban in favour of allowing individual sports federations to make the call on which Russians can go to Rio.
