IOC opens door for Russian track at Olympics

“We look forward to working closely with the International Federations to determine how to assess eligibility”.

Besides taking drug tests, it remains unclear how athletes will prove to the IAAF that they have remained untainted by performance-enhancing drugs.

“Today we’re ready for all experiments and we’re ready to be open”.

Any Russian track and field athletes who successfully appeal the ban and end up competing in Rio will now do so under the Russian flag, rather than an Olympic or neutral one.

“The team we shall select for the Rio Olympics, will be tested fully, just as much as those who participate in the Diamond League are regularly tested”, he said.

“Therefore each athlete coming from these two countries will have to be declared eligible by the respective global federation following an individual procedure and an individual evaluation of the situation”, the president of the worldwide Olympics Committee, Thomas Bach said at a media briefing.

Speaking in Lausanne, Mr Bach said the condition of the anti-doping authorities in both countries put “very serious doubts on the presumption of innocence”. “We can say that they are letting us compete without preparation for the Olympic Games”. What is the problem?

Russian track and field athletes Mariya Savinova (left) and Ekaterina Poistogova (right) at the 2012 London Olympics.

Stepanova has been relocated to Canada but the 29-year-old middle-distance runner had hoped to qualify for and compete in Rio under the International Olympic Committee flag.

The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) on Friday voted to uphold Russia’s suspension, first imposed in November after a WADA report unveiled state-sponsored doping and widespread corruption in Russian athletics.

Those criticisms were echoed in Russian Olympic committee’s president Aleksander Zhukov’s address to IOC executives in Lausanne.

Kenyan athletes will also be evaluated for doping on an individual basis and would have to be cleared by their sports’ worldwide governing body, Bach said.

IAAF President Sebastian Coe was among those attending, along with Russia’s Olympic committee chief Alexander Zhukov. “The non-compliance declaration of the Spanish NADO is for administrative reasons only and does not affect the doping-control system”, read the International Olympic Committee statement.

“When the state is accused, then it’s always politics and unfortunately athletes become hostages of such political rulings and the pressure exerted on the country”, Mutko said Monday in comments to Russia’s Interfax news agency. The International federation postponed a doping panel hearing of her case pending WADA research on a substance that joined the banned list of substances in January this year.

IOC President Thomas Bach said if any Russians are deemed eligible by the IAAF, they would compete under the Russian flag.

After several reporters at Tuesday’s news conference asked for a clarification of the IOC’s stance, Bach described how athletes compete for their national Olympic committees, not for the sports federations.

The IAAF has not released details on the criteria runners seeking permission to compete at the Olympics will be required to meet.