“Moreover, after having coordinated its stance with ARAF, the Russian Olympic Committee [ROC] filed a lawsuit against IAAF with the Court of Arbitration for Sport [CAS] in Lausanne concerning the legal aspects of the introduction of additional criteria necessary to confirm athletes’ admission to the Olympics”, the statement said.
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The IAAF ban followed a November report from the World Anti-Doping Agency which said Russia’s track and field programme had been corrupted to the point where even clean drug tests were meaningless.
July 4 was set as the deadline for the submission of individual applications, while the 2016 Summer Olympics are scheduled to be held in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro between August 5 and 21.
“Each sportsman has sent an individual request to compete in the Olympic Games which will be checked by the IAAF, as ARAF is now not a member of the IAAF”, said a statement on ARAF’s official website (www.rusathletics.com) on Tuesday.
The list includes track and field stars like world champion hurdler Sergey Shubenkov, long-jumper Darya Klishina, and pole vault tsarina Yelena Isinbayeva.
But it left the door ajar to some competitors not tainted by doping to compete as neutrals in Rio.
The ROC and the 68 Russian athletes have specifically asked the court to “order that any Russian athlete who is not now the subject of any period of ineligibility for the commission of an anti-doping rule violation may participate at the 2016 Olympic Games”, assuming they otherwise qualified.
The International Olympic Committee went a step further and said athletes who pass an individual test by the IAAF can compete under their nation’s flag.
On July 2, the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and the 68 athletes filed appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) against the IAAF ban and asked to be allowed to take part in global competition in time for the Olympics.
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More than 80 Russians have applied for this procedure but only a handful are likely to be eligible.
