Russian Doping Ban Appeals Get Rejected

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has rejected an appeal by all eight of Russia’s Olympic weightlifting team against their doping ban.

The rowers, along with several other Russian athletes from other sports, had their appeals heard by CAS on Tuesday and Inside the Games reported that the Court upheld the principle of athletes being ruled ineligible if they can not effectively “prove they are clean”.

Following the FISA decision, Russian rowing boats which qualified for the Olympics in the LM4-, LW2x, M8 and W8 classes have been banned from competitions, as reported by Insidethegames.biz portal.

“The appeal by the 17 was rejected”, the CAS official said.

One of those cases, Nikita Lobintsev and Vladimir Morozov versus swimming’s governing body FINA, has already been heard and is now being considered by the three-person International Olympic Committee panel that will make the final decision on the eligibility of all Russian athletes.

Rules allowing the IWF to sanction a national federation for bringing “the sport of weightlifting into disrepute” because of doping violations were properly applied in this case, CAS said in a statement.

The IOC has directed sports federations to allow Russian athletes to compete in Rio only if they could effectively prove that they had operated in an environment with a bona-fide anti-doping regime. It said that if this is successful it will start a new case on behalf of eight weightlifters banned from the Olympics.

Efimova’s hearing was adjourned on Monday and will resume on Thursday.

The separate appeals of four Russian weightlifters against their International Weightlifting Federation-imposed bans and three Russian cyclists against their international federation have not been scheduled yet.

Last week it noted that Russian competitors had been named in the McLaren Report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that exposed evidence of state-backed doping, evasion and cover-ups in Russia.