Weightlifting became the second sport after track and field to issue blanket bans on Russian athletes.
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Russian pole vault queen Yelena Isinbayeva said on Thursday she intends to move various courts to prove that she had been illegally barred from the Rio Olympic Games, opening on August 5.
More than 250 Russian athletes from the original team of 387 have so far been cleared to compete at the Olympics.
Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutkov told Match TV on Saturday that the country will appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport this weekend.
The IOC panel consists of Ugur Erdener, the IOC’s medical commission chairman, Claudia Bokel, head of the athletes commission and fellow IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., vice president of the Modern Pentathlon federation.
After a conference call by its Executive Board on July 24, the IOC urged worldwide federations for winter sports events to suspend preparations for major competitions in Russia.
On June 17, the IAAF Council ruled it was still too early to restore ARAF’s (All-Russia Athletics Federation) membership, subsequently extending the suspension of Russian athletes from all worldwide tournaments, including the 2016 Olympic Games.
In justifying its actions against Russia, the IWF said retests of samples from seven Russian weightlifters who took part in the 2008 Beijing Olympics or 2012 London Olympics resulted in positive tests.
“The swimmers also request that the decision of the FINA bureau of July 25 2016, declaring both of them ineligible for the Olympic Games in Rio, be set aside”.
World Health Organisation Director General, Margaret Chan, said on Friday that the risk of Zika infection has been found to be both low and manageable.
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With the start of the Rio Olympics six days away, McLaren said in a statement that sports federations tasked by the International Olympic Committee to determine which Russians can compete have flooded him with requests to name athletes implicated in connection with his probe. “There has never been a clean Olympics and there is no reason to believe that Rio will be clean”, he told O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper. “It is about individual athletes”, Adams said.
