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.
The ROC and 68 athletes asked CAS to review the validity and enforceability of an International Association of Athletics Federation rule change to allow some Russian athletes to apply for exceptional eligibility to compete in Rio. That decision came in June as the IAAF extended a ban that will keep Russia from sending a track and field team to the Olympics.
The three-person CAS panel unanimously upheld an IAAF rule change that would allow some Russian athletes to compete in Rio so long as they could demonstrate their anti-doping record. Because the national federation (RUSAF) is suspended from IAAF membership, athletes who don’t qualify under that rule change are ineligible to compete in Rio, the panel said.
“While we are thankful that our rules and our power to uphold our rules and the anti-doping code have been supported, this is not a day for triumphant statements. I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing,” IAAF’s president Sebastien Coe said in a statement. “It is our federation’s instinctive desire to include, not exclude. Beyond Rio the IAAF Taskforce will continue to work with Russia to establish a clean safe environment for its athletes so that its federation and team can return to international recognition and competition."
The CAS decision likely gives the IOC framework for how it could proceed as it considers a full ban of Russian athletes, but, whatever decision it would make must come quickly, as the Games open on Aug. 5.
The IAAF in June extended a ban that has been in place since November, when a report from a World Anti-Doping Agency independent commission revealed widespread doping in Russian athletics. In banning the Russian team through Rio, the IAAF relied on its taskforce’s findings that RUSAF had not met enough of the verification criteria showing a change in the doping culture to warrant reinstatement.
To receive exceptional eligibility, athletes would have to show an IAAF doping review board that they had been subject to effective anti-doping control systems in other countries and that they had not been tainted by the Russian system.
The ROC and 68 athletes also asked CAS to declare eligible for Rio any Russian athlete who is not currently serving a suspension for an anti-doping rule violation.
The CAS panel did not do so, saying that the ROC cannot nominate track and field athletes to compete in Rio who are not eligible to participate under IAAF competition rules.
The CAS decision rejected an appeal by 67 athletes who saw the IAAF deny their applications to compete as neutral athletes.
Despite upholding the IAAF rule, the CAS panel was concerned that athletes weren't given much time to comply with criteria for eligibility.
The IAAF said then that it expected only a few athletes to meet criteria for exceptional eligibility and that any that did would compete as neutral athletes in Rio rather than under the Russian flag.
So far, the IAAF has only granted exceptional eligibility to 800-meter runner Yuliya Stepanova, the whistleblower who provided much of the evidence in the investigation, and long jumper Darya Klishina, who trains in Florida. The IAAF said it had received 136 applications from Russian athletes earlier this month.
Calls for full ban of Russian team
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.
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.
The decision could now pave the way for the IOC to similarly ban the Russian delegation entirely while creating a review process that could allow Russian athletes who could demonstrate their anti-doping record met certain criteria to compete in Rio. Since the IAAF extended its ban, the IOC has said it would try to find the balance between collective responsibility and individual justice.
Still to be resolved is under which flag any Russians would compete under. In making its rule change, the IAAF asserted that any athletes who receive exceptional eligibility would compete as neutral athletes. Bach has said they would compete under the Russian flag.
CAS said in its release that because the IOC was not party to the arbitration, the panel did not have jurisdiction to decide whether the IOC can accept or refuse nominations of athletes by the ROC and whether it can accept or refuse those athletes as representatives of Russia or as neutral athletes.
ROC president Alexander Zhukov told the Associated Press that he expects a decision by the IOC on Sunday.
Calls for a ban of Russia have intensified since Monday, when 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 thought to be tamperproof to allow Rodchenkov to swap out dirty urine for clean urine.
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.
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