IOC board to review Rio final preparations, Russia doping

Less than a week before the opening of the Olympics, IOC leaders will meet in Rio de Janeiro this weekend to review the final preparations for the games and deal with the fallout from the doping scandal that has led to the exclusion of more than 100 Russian athletes.

The International Olympic Committee’s ruling executive board opens a two-day meeting on Saturday, its last formal gathering before next Friday night’s opening ceremony at the Maracana stadium.

The meeting comes less than a week after the IOC board decided not to ban Russia’s entire team from the games because of state-sponsored doping. Rejecting calls by more than a dozen antidoping agencies for a complete ban on Russia, the IOC left it to individual sports federations to vet which athletes could compete or not.

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said Friday that, so far, 272 of the country’s athletes had been cleared by international federations, out of an original team of 387. More than 100, however, have been barred _ including the track and field team banned by the IAAF and more than 30 other athletes rejected under new IOC eligibility criteria.

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

The IOC has been roundly criticized by anti-doping bodies, athletes groups and Western media for not imposing a total ban on Russia. Pressure for the full sanction followed a World AntiDoping Agency report by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren that accused Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing a vast doping conspiracy involving the country’s summer and winter sports athletes.

Bach has defended the decision as protecting individual athletes from collective punishment.