The IOC’s decision on Sunday follows the release on 18 July of an independent report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) into doping in Russian sports.
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In addition, the worldwide sports federations were ordered to check each Russian athlete’s drug-testing record, with only doping controls conducted outside Russia counting toward eligibility, before authorizing them to compete.
Russia’s track and field athletes have already been banned by the IAAF, the sport’s governing body, a decision that was upheld Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and was accepted by the International Olympic Committee again on Sunday.
“They set a very good example and I thought the International Olympic Committee, looking at the bigger picture, would then have banned the whole Russian team”, Davies told BBC Wales Sport. “It shows it is determined to fight doping but also mindful of its charter to protect the rights of all athletes, which in this case are the clean and innocent Russian athletes”.
“The ITF will be seeking confirmation from WADA that none of those players, or the Russian Tennis Federation, were implicated in the McLaren report, in accordance with the International Olympic Committee decision”, added the ITF statement.
“We have always supported clean Games and zero tolerance for doping”. About 20 different summer Olympic sports were accused in the report.
That means that while convicted cheats such as American sprinter Justin Gatlin will be present, there will be no place for two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbaeva, who has never been charged with doping, or whistleblower Yulia Stepanova, who had been cleared to compete as a neutral athlete.
“We have set the bar to the limit”, IOC president Thomas Bach said after the meeting in defending the action against the worst doping scandal in the Olympic movement’s history.
The IOC says the federations have the authority, under their own rules, to exclude Russian teams as a whole from their sports.
Zhukov said that all athletes planning to compete in the Olympics had been tested over the last six months by foreign anti-doping agencies, and that more than 3,000 Russian samples were taken by foreign doping control officers and analyzed in foreign labs.
Never has a country been kicked out of the Olympics for doping violations.
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The IOC had faced widespread pressure for tough action against Russian Federation, which denied any state role in the doping. However, the impact on the medal tally is likely to be less severe than the damage caused by the earlier ban on its track team, Russia’s most successful contingent in London four years ago.
