Efimova Is a Poor Poster Child for Russian Scandal

Since testing positive for meldonium this year she has been banned and reinstated twice in a convoluted case that saw her allowed into the Rio Games at the last minute along with six other Russian swimmers who had either tested positive in the past or been named in the damning report on state-sponsored doping in Russia. He defended the IOC’s decision not to pursue the “nuclear option” of a full ban, because of the collateral damage of innocent athletes not being allowed to compete.

Before a hungry audience in Rio on Tuesday, it was the job of International Olympic Committee communications chief, Mark Adams, to answer that vexed question. It was a contrast to the celebrations of China’s Sun Yang, another swimmer targeted by his peers for past drugs transgressions who shook off controversy to win the 200m freestyle gold. “Why start it again, by using sport?” “I’d never seen her like that”, Chapman recalled.

“I’ve been there, and I knew there were athletes who were doping”.

“But at the end of the day you’re still there trying to do your best”.

He said the athletes would be avoiding letting the disputes have an impact on their performance.

Efimova has been booed every time she entered the pool deck at the Rio Games while King added fuel to the fire on Sunday when the pair exchanged angry glances before she told reporters she was not happy with the Russian being able to compete. Hardly any Americans could name a swimmer besides Michael Phelps, and it only took him becoming perhaps the most decorated athlete in history to get there.

“It’s not that everyone who tests positive is evil”, he said in a phone interview.

“He’s one of the athletes here who has tested positive”.

Australian swimmer Mack Horton originally labeled Sun a “drug cheat”. “When I see the 200m podium I want to be sick”.

Founded in 1894, the IOC is among the oldest worldwide governing bodies and a model for world governance and cooperation.

“I hope FINA will react quickly and stop this massacre because it’s becoming sad”.

Lilly King has her sights set on winning Olympic gold and she’s not about to let anyone get in her way, especially not world champion breaststroker Yulia Efimova of Russian Federation.

Salnikov said the American was entitled to her opinion, but noted that Efimova had been cleared to compete last week by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the highest appeal tribunal, and was therefore fully entitled to take part. “I’m not a fan”. Yet somehow worldwide swimming officials found a way to let her compete.

For good measure, David Plummer – a 30-year-old Olympic rookie – claimed the bronze.

Russian Federation took gold and silver in the women’s sabre fencing as Yana Egorian beat Sofiya Velikaya, who again suffered heartbreak after also losing the 2012 Olympic final.

King said he shouldn’t be included in the American track and field team for Rio.

“We don’t deserve that”, she said of Efimova’s treatment at the Olympic Aquatics Stadium.

“They think we do all these bad things, that we are cunning and wicked”, said Tatyana Omelchenko, who travelled nearly 15,000 km (9,320 miles) from the Russian city of Krasnoyarsk in Siberia to watch fencing in Rio.

At an awkward news conference alongside Efimova, the 19-year-old King said: “I do think it is a victory for clean sport and just to show that you can do it while. competing clean your whole life”. “It’s something that needs to be set in stone to settle this”.

It has been revealed that Efimova was one of two convicted drug cheats who escaped testing for five months previous year.

Efimova’s rivals may not like them.

They were only subjected to testing by their own national bodies, whose programmes have been discredited. That marked an unusually dissonant note for the Olympics, which despite its scandals and modern commercialism has managed to remain a refuge for championing the human spirit irrespective of nationality. “And we were just thinking, ‘Someday the real Lilly’s going to come out – that girl who says what she means and doesn’t care what anybody else thinks”.