The president of the Russian Olympic Committee says more than 250 Russian athletes will clear the anti-doping checks required to compete in Rio and insisted the Russian team will be the cleanest at the Games.
In brazen disregard of the report on Russian doping by the respected law professor Richard McLaren, Alexander Zhukov also claimed there had never been state-sponsored doping in Russia.
“I can say only one thing: we have never had any state programmes for doping support,” Zhukov said. “We have zero tolerance for doping. Russia’s team is the cleanest one at Rio.”
On Thursday cycling’s governing body, the UCI, became the latest international federation to declare on Russian athletes’ eligibility for Rio, approving 11 cyclists but rejecting six others – three for previous bans and three because they were named as being on a list of “protected athletes” in the McLaren report.
In a statement the UCI said it was satisfied the 11 riders it had cleared had fulfilled the criteria laid down by the International Olympic Committee on Sunday. The United World Wrestling’s Special Commission also announced it had approved 16 of 17 Russian wrestlers, with only Viktor Lebedev rejected because of a positive test at the 2006 Junior World Championships.
Zhukov said the final lineup of the Russia team eligible for the Rio Olympics would be announced on either Saturday or Sunday and predicted it would feature over 250 athletes. “We will tell how many people will go in the next few days,” he said. “But nevertheless our team is strong. These are athletes who are ranked among the world elite, they will fight for victory.”
The exact numbers will depend on the court of arbitration for sport, who will scrutinise each Russian athlete passed by the international federations in the coming days. However, a number of legal experts the Guardian spoke to did not expect Cas to drastically alter those numbers.
John Coates, the head of Cas as well as an IOC vice-president, has confirmed he spent three days on the legal aspects of the IOC’s decision with a chair of the IOC legal affairs commission. This week he said: “We were mindful of the need for justice for clean athletes. We did not want to penalise athletes who are clean with a collective ban and therefore keeping them out of the Games.”
Others federations are still to announce their decision, although the International Volleyball Federation said it had submitted a list of Russian volleyball and beach volleyball participants to the IOC and Cas for approval.
Three Russian competitors from table tennis and another three from taekwondo are also waiting to be cleared, as are 11 Russian boxers.
The R-Sport news agency cited the International Gymnastics Federation vice-president, Vitaly Titov, as saying the entire team of Russian gymnasts had been cleared to compete, while Zhukov said a complete ban on Russian weighlifters was also unlikely. “The team in weightlifting is going to be small, probably of three athletes,” he said.
Zhukov also announced an independent anti-doping commission had been set up to collaborate with McLaren as he continues his report. “We have set up a special anti-doping commission,” he said. “Its key tasks are to analyse and identify causes linked with doping. We cooperate with McLaren on all issues, without fail.”
The new Russian commission will be run by Vitaly Smirnov, a former Soviet sports minister and IOC member, who insisted it would be independent of the government, despite it containing several senior figures with links to the Kremlin.
Smirnov said: “We will welcome the arrival of the World Anti-Doping Agency and we rule out any attempts at interference by the state or other structures. In Russia there is not, and never has been, any state support for doping.”
On Thursday the majority of the Russian team flew to Rio, with some promising they would work even harder to win medals for athletes who had been denied their Olympic opportunity. “We’re after medals, that’s it,” the handball player Anna Sen said. “We need to fight for those athletes who were disqualified.”
The volleyball player Sergei Tetyukhin, a four-times Olympic medallist, is expected to be Russia’s flagbearer for the opening ceremony in Rio. Speaking before his departure, the 40-year-old urged the Russian team on to greater glories. “Today, as never before, we need to stay united and become a family,” he said, urging his team to ignore what he called “provocations addressed at our team and our mighty country”.
(Guardian service)
