Two-time Olympic champion Yelena Isinbayeva has denied claims she was offered the chance to be Russia’s flagbearer at the Rio 2016 Opening Ceremony, despite not being able to compete at the Games due to the athletics team’s ban.
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Australia’s Olympic delegation presented Rio de Janeiro’s mayor, Eduardo Paes, with a toy boxing kangaroo yesterday as they laid to rest a spat over conditions in the Olympic Village that has marred the buildup to next month’s Games.
The track team did, however, attend the ceremonial farewell with Putin on Wednesday, when the Russian president branded restrictions on Russia “pure discrimination”.
Instead of an outright ban on Russian participation, as the World Anti-Doping Agency had urged, the IOC will impose a convoluted case-by-case review of Russian athletes, carried out by the 28international federations that govern each Olympic sport.
As she prepared to depart, handball player Anna Sen vowed to “fight for those athletes who were disqualified”.
Johnson-Thompson believes the IOC were faced with a tough call as they were forced to decide whether to ban every Russian athlete from Rio 2016, with the fear that innocent athletes would get caught up in a blanket ban contrasted by her emotions for athletes that have had their Olympic dreams shattered by rivals who were later proved to have taken drugs.
Russia had originally planned to send a 387-person team, but that has steadily been reduced as federations removed those who had previously served doping bans and those implicated in World Anti-Doping Agency investigator Richard McLaren’s report alleging a massive cover-up of failed drug tests.
“Flagbearer at the Olympics in Rio has already been decided, it is a great athlete, Olympic volleyball champion, Sergey Tetyukhin”.
The pole vaulter has been one of the most vocal critics of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) decision to ban Russian track and field athletes from international competition.
“We never blew the whistle with the intent to getting a spectators’ invitation to Rio”, the couple said in the letter. “Of course, it will not be easy for those who will go to Rio”. These rulings must still be ratified by CAS. Other sports, such as judo and tennis, have allowed the entire Russian team in their event to compete.
UWW’s Special Commission also recommended that the International Olympic Committee tests the entire Russian wrestling team in Rio before the start of the competition.
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Smirnov told local media Thursday that the new commission would be independent of the government, despite containing several senior figures with links to the Kremlin. We say that not so much out of concern for the results of the Games themselves, which are bound to provide the usual portion of thrills, chills – and accusations of various transgressions by participants and officials.
