Seven more Russian athletes were banned from competing at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday after being implicated in the damning World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report into state-sponsored doping and cover
ADVERTISEMENTSeven more Russian athletes were banned from competing at the Rio Olympics on Tuesday after being implicated in the damning World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) report into state-sponsored doping and cover-ups in the country.
On Sunday the IOC ruled against a blanket ban on Russia and passed the responsibility to the international federations to clear individual athletes for Rio.
Head of Russia’s Olympic committee Alexander Zhukov said: “Сhecking of lists of our sportsmen is now underway. Each of our sports federations is cooperating with the relevant international federations. There are some athletes who do not meet the (doping) criteria of the International Olympic Committee. As a result of this work conclusions will be drawn about the composition (of the Russian team).”
Five sprint canoeists and two modern pentathletes are the latest to be cut from the Russian team while it is likely more of the nation’s athletes will be added to the Olympic no-go list in the coming days.
At full strength Russia’s Olympic team would have been almost 400 strong, some reports now suggest it could end up as small as 40 – although Zhukov said this figure was too low.
Russian track and field athletes have been provisionally banned from all international competition, including the Games by the IAAF since November while on Monday three rowers and seven swimmers were banned by their respective governing bodies.
Sprint canoeists Elena Aniushina, Natalia Podolskaia, Alexander Dyachenko, Andrey Kraitor and Alexey Korovashkov have all been suspended pending further investigation while Modern pentathlon’s Maksim Kustov and Ilia Frolov have also been banned from competition.