Russia’s Olympic hopes received a boost yesterday when the governing bodies for judo and shooting approved the eligibility of all of their athletes for the Rio Games.
The news followed a run of decisions from sports which saw Russia lose athletes because of their involvement in the country’s recently-uncovered, state-run doping programme, or because they had already served doping bans before.
Each sport was controversially asked to make its own decision on the eligibility of Russian athletes by the IOC on Sunday, when it decided against banning the entire team.
In a statement, the executive committee of the International Shooting Sport Federation said none of Russia’s 18 proposed competitors appeared in Richard McLaren’s damning report into the Russian doping scandal or had previously served bans.
And a spokesperson for International Judo Federation (IJF) president Marius Vizer told PA Sport that the federation had written to the IOC to say all 11 of Russia’s proposed team should be considered eligible.
Russia won only one bronze medal in the shooting at London 2012 but claimed three golds, a silver and a bronze in the judo competition. They were the first Olympic judo gold medals the country had ever won.
Vizer’s support for Russia came as little surprise, though, as Russian President Vladimir Putin is the IJF’s honorary president.
There was also no word on the identities of the Russian judo players responsible for the eight manipulated drugs tests uncovered by McLaren.
Earlier, the International Canoe Federation (ICF) became the latest governing body to ban a number of Russians from Rio.
The ICF ruled five sprint canoeists – Elena Aniushina, Alexander Dyachenko, Alexey Korovashkov, Andrey Kraitor and Natalia Podolskaia – ineligible but stopped short of issuing a federation-wide ban.
That followed Monday’s decisions by rowing to bar three Russian rowers, and swimming to ban three swimmers, with four more being withdrawn by the Russian Olympic Committee.
Meanwhile, archery, equestrian and tennis were quick out of the blocks in confirming the eligibility of the Russian entries, while the Russian media is reporting their seven-strong sailing team are already in Rio and will be allowed to compete.
Modern pentathlon has declared Ilia Frolov and Maksim Kustov ineligible because they appear in McLaren’s report.
Frolov was only a reserve for the team but Kustov’s place will now go to Ruslan Nakonechnyi of Latvia.