CAS upholds ban of
Russian track and field team from Rio
The Court of Arbitration for
Sport announced on Thursday that it has rejected the claims and appeal of the
Russian Olympic Committee and 68 athletes who had challenged a ban from the track federation that would keep the country from competing in Rio.CAS announced the decision in a one-sentence release on its website.The athletes and
ROC had challenged a ban by the
International Association of Athletics Federations in June that will keep the team from going to the
Summer Olympics.The CAS decision comes amid calls from athletes and anti-doping officials for the
IOC to ban
Russia from the
Rio Olympics following the release of another
WADA report this week that revealed even more widespread doping issues than previously known.On Monday,
Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren released a report that confirmed allegations of doping and tampering with samples during the
Sochi Olympics and revealed a larger system of covering up positive tests of doped Russian athletes that reached the highest levels of sport.Termed the
Disappearing Positive Methodology, the system revealed in the report included the
Ministry of Sport,
Center of
Sports Preparation of the
National Teams of Russia (
CSP),
Federal Security Service (
FSB) and the
Moscow and
Sochi labs working in coordination from
2011 to
2015 to cover up
643 positive tests of athletes across 29
Olympic sports.
The system was led by
Yury Nagognykh, the deputy sports minister and a member of the Russian Olympic Committee's executive board, and included several top Russian sports officials.The McLaren report confirmed allegations that Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, former director of the Moscow lab, made about the FSB helping cover up doping at the
Sochi Games by unsealing bottles previously thought to be tamperproof to allow Rodchenkov to swap out dirty urine for clean urine.
Following the report, president
Thomas Bach said the IOC "will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available' against individuals or organizations implicated in the McLaren report. The IOC said it is exploring legal options for a ban of Russia entirely from the upcoming
Olympics but wanted to consider the CAS decision.On Wednesday, anti-doping leaders from 14 countries called upon
Bach and the IOC to ban Russia immediately. The letter was signed by
U.S. Anti-Doping
Agency CEO Travis Tygart as well as the heads of nine
European national anti-doping organizations.Following the release of the McLaren report, WADA and the
Institute of National Anti-Doping
Organizations (iNADO) also called for a ban of Russia.The CAS decision likely gives the IOC framework for how it could proceed.
Whatever decision it would make must come quickly, as the
Games open on Aug. 5.
- published: 21 Jul 2016
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