WADA defends timing of Russia report after IOC criticism

Russian doping whistleblower Vitaly Stepanov told a Brazilian newspaper that the Rio Olympics “will not be clean”, and blasted the International Olympic Committee for not banning Russia.

Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko on Saturday said that he expects 266 athletes from the European nation to be cleared for the Games in Brazil, which start on Friday.

The Rio Olympics will commence on August 5, in the shadow of the Russian doping scandal which made anti-doping fight at these Games the focus of attention, Xinhua news agency reported.

Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren said Saturday, July 30, 2016, he is facing “a deluge of requests” to provide information on individual athletes implicated in his report on state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation.

Russians who have been banned so far include the 67 track and field athletes barred as a whole by the IAAF, and more than 30 others who have failed to meet the IOC’s new eligibility criteria.

Weightlifting’s reputation “has been seriously damaged on multiple times and levels by the Russians, therefore an appropriate sanction was applied in order to preserve the status of the sport”, the IWF said.

Morozov, a member of the 4x100m freestyle relay team that took bronze at the 2012 London Games, and Lobintsev, who took silver in the 4x200m freestyle team in Beijing in 2008 and bronze in the 4x100m freestyle in London, have taken their action against the International Olympic Committee and FINA.

The German powerbroker is bullish about Rio de Janeiro’s ability to pull off a successful Olympic Games, despite a multitude of problems.

Speaking at a news conference five days before the opening of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Bach said a total ban on Russian Federation for systematic doping “would not be justifiable” on either moral or legal grounds.

Bach has defended the decision as one that protects individual athletes who have not been implicated in doping. The IOC Executive Committee decided not to ban the Russian team.

The IOC rejected calls by WADA and other anti-doping bodies to ban Russia’s entire Olympic team from the Rio de Janeiro Games.

A metro line linking the centre of Rio to the Olympic zone opened on Monday but will only be used by athletes and Olympic officials because not enough full scale tests have been carried out.

I’ve never been a big fan of the Olympics-at least not over the past 20 years or so-because they’ve become tainted with greed, money grabbing, good-old-boys back room deals, too many non-amateur athletes and way too much commercialization.

“To summarise, it is coming together”, Bach told reporters on Sunday.

“As always, there are some last-minute challenges”.

The metro passes by Guanabara Bay, in the shadow of Rio’s iconic Sugarloaf Mountain where the sailing events will be held.

Russia’s eight-member weightlifting team was kicked out of the games on Friday for what the worldwide federation called “extremely shocking” doping results that brought the sport into “disrepute”.