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Seven Russian swimmers hit with Olympics ban

Individual decisions on Russian athletes have been referred to relevant global federations.

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Lobintsev was also a member of that Russian team and their absence now means the Australian team will enter the race among the contenders for gold.

United States anti-doping chief Travis Tygart, one of many who urged a total ban against Russian Federation, blasted the International Olympic Committee for creating “a confusing mess.”.

For those who see Russia as being scapegoated by an unfair process of secret evidence and absence of an appeals procedure, the decision has affixed a permanent scarlet “S” to Russian athletes for a generation.

Lalovic said that the UWW recently clarified to the International Olympic Committee that the Russian labs implicated in the McLaren Report are not part of its testing protocol. The IOC accepted that ruling, but would not extend it to other sports.

That’s the result of a compromise announced by the International Olympic Committee over the weekend, roughly a month after the IOC forged a similar arrangement for Russian track and field athletes.

The IOC made a decision early Monday morning not to give a blanket ban on Russian athletes despite a damning report that revealed state-sponsored doping systems for a number of years.

The focus will now be on the Olympic sports to let in Russians who they believe are drug-free.

The couple have asked the IOC executive board (IOC EB) to review its decision.

The possibility of Efimova competing in the Rio Olympics was already a major talking point in the sport.

Others, especially top political leaders in Moscow, insisted collective punishment would be unjust.

The IOC rejected a request by Ms Stepanova to run in the Rio Games as an independent athlete, but extended an invite to the couple to watch as spectators – a move Mr Stepanov said felt like they were both being bought.

“In this way we are protecting the clean athletes because of the high criteria we set”.

“Therefor we have no reason not to welcome the Russian theme in Rio”.

First, athletes must be individually cleared by their respective sports federation and there should be no presumption of innocence.

It also brings back memories of the so-called Osaka Rule which was nullified in 2011 by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

“The McLaren Report exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping program in Russian Federation that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code”.

This denied Stepanova a chance to compete at the games which start in Rio de Janeiro on August 5 as she had been sanctioned for doping in 2013.

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Pound says “I think it’s a cop-out to delegate all this to the federations”, adding, “it’s the worst precedent I can imagine”.

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