Doping ban against Russian athletes at 2016 Rio Olympics

Olympic silver medalist and prominent athletics commentator on Russian TV, Olga Bogoslovskaya, has called Bach’s statements the “first good news” for the country’s track and field athletes since the IAAF imposed a ban on them.

“It’s the best possible outcome we could’ve hoped for. I’m confident that we’ll have time to defend our interests in the legal field and that our team would go to Rio be it in a reduced lineup,” she told RT.

Bogoslovskaya said she contacted the coach of pole vault queen, Yelena Isinbayeva, who was especially happy that IOC ruled that the Russian athletes would compete in Rio under Russia’s national flag.

Speaking about the lawsuits that Russian athletes have to file and win to secure their participation in the Rio Olympics, Zhukov said they “are most likely to file the lawsuits individually and probably with the support of the All-Russia Athletics Federation.”

“The Russian Olympic Committee will definitely provide assistance. If our lawyers find any issues in the IAAF decision that run counter to the Olympic Charter, we will also file a lawsuit,” he added.

“The key reason for suspending Russian athletes” is the distrust of the IAAF and the IOC to the Russian anti-doping system, Aleksandr Zhukov, the head of the Russian Olympic Committee, told journalists after the IOC press conference.

Zhukov said that “in the past six months, it was not the Russian system, it was an international system acting on the territory of Russia,” adding that he sees no reason for the international sports organizations not to trust the doping tests of Russian athletes now.

Zhukov also said that Russia “decided not to send to Rio any athletes who were implied in any doping scandals throughout their careers.”

Russia is ready to establish a transparent anti-doping system with the International Olympic Committee, Russia Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko has told R-Sport.

"We fully support [Thomas] Bach, we fully support the IOC. Russia was and will continue to be a part of the international Olympic movement," Mutko said.

Reports on alleged doping violations by Russian sportsmen naturally don’t include the "clean athletes," the Russian Athletic Federation's Dmitry Shliakhtin told RT.

“We had half a year of productive work. We are told that Yuriy Borzakovskiy [the current coach of the Russian track and field team] hasn’t thoroughly taken on board the WADA report, we are hear about [Grigory] Rodchenkov who told [the media] about the Sochi Olympics. I believe it has nothing to do with ‘clean’ athletes,” he said.

Rodchenkov, a former chief of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, claimed in US media that he violated anti-doping regulations during the Sochi Olympics.

The president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Alexander Zhukov, has called on International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach to make a fair decision towards Russian athletes.

“We are extremely saddened by the IAAF [International Association of Athletics Federations] decision to suspend Russian athletes from international competitions, including the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro,” Zhukov wrote in a letter to Bach.

He said that Russia considers this decision to be “unfair” and a “violation of the rights of the overwhelming majority of Russian athletes, who never resorted to use doping and haven’t violated any rules.”

“Moreover, they have been repeatedly tested by independent (foreign) anti-doping agencies and fairly competed for the right to participate in the Olympic Games.”

The head of the All-Russia Athletics Federation, Mikhail Butov, told RT that he hopes that Yelena Isinbayeva and other Russian athletics stars will still compete at the Rio 2016 Olympics.

He said that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) should trust the athletes who have proven to be clean and are “under the control of the [international] anti-doping systems.”

“Let’s wait for the final decision, and then we will see what can be done… I still secretly hope that some of our athletes will be allowed to participate in the Olympics individually,” Svetlana Zhurova, Russian MP and Olympic speed skating champion, told RT.

Track and field athletics is one of the key sports in Russia, and the Olympic Games without the Russian team would be “incomplete,” Zhurova noted.