Russian weightlifting team banned from Rio Olympics

In a move reminiscent of the “Friendship Games” attended by Soviet Bloc and Eastern European countries boycotting the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, Russia has thrown its banned athletes their own version of the Olympics: The Stars 2016 Tournament.

The IWF described the doping results as “extremely shocking and disappointing”. It said the punishment was an “appropriate sanction” to “preserve the status of the sport”.

Of the 68 Russian track and field athletes banned from Rio, just one – long jumper Darya Klishina – was granted permission to compete next month after she proved to the IAAF that she is clean.

Weightlifting is the latest Olympic sport to be subjected to a Russian ban.

The International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) said some of the Russian competitors had been named in a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency which exposed evidence of state-backed cheating in Russia.

Russian Federation nominated eight weightlifters to compete in Rio but Tatiana Kashirina, who won a silver medal at the London Olympics in the women’s +75kg category, and Anastasiia Romanova were withdrawn due to previous anti-doping rule violations. The names of the other banned lifters were not announced. Tellingly, 31 of the 98 positives confirmed so far in the retests of samples taken at the 2008 or 2012 Olympics have been by weightlifters.