Winter Games ban: Russian group goes to court

MOSCOW: A group of 22 Russian athletes suspended by the IOC have appealed against their lifetime Olympic bans with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). The athletes were all sanctioned for doping violations after samples from the 2014 Sochi Games were retested as part of the Oswald Commission. News of the appeal comes a day after Russia’s federation was ruled out of returning to competitive action for the Pyeongchang Games next year. Five gold medalists are among the 22, including bobsledder Aleksandr Zubkov, who was Russia’s flagbearer for the Games. The Sochi event was tainted by state-sponsored doping and cover-ups, which led to Russia’s total ban from the 2016 Olympics and subsequent Games.

NO EMOTINAL REPSONSE

The Kremlin cautioned against an “emotional” response after Russia was banned from the Winter Olympic Games, as politicians and athletes reacted with anger and disappointment.

Russia was banned Tuesday from the 2018 Winter Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) over its state-orches- trated doping programme -something it has always denied -but clean Russian athletes will be allowed to compete under an Olympic flag. “The situation is serious, it calls for deep analysis and it would be wrong to give in to emotion here,” President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

Putin has yet to personally comment on a possible boycott but was set to make a speech in Moscow later Wednesday in which he was expected to give his view on the IOC’S decision.

Officials are expected to discuss the country’s response to the ban next Tuesday. The head of Russia’s Olympic Committee, Alexander Zhukov, has told the IOC that punishing clean athletes was “unjust and immoral”.

Russian media expressed regret at the decision while welcoming the possibility of some athletes participating, albeit under tight restrictions.

The IOC “chose one of the harshest options it was considering but still not the harshest of all”, which would have been a total ban, wrote Kommersant business daily. “It’s very hard to take accusations and punishments. But the fate of our athletes and preserving our place in the Olympic family is more important,” wrote Sport Express daily. Urine sample

Test Moscow laboratory

Unofficial flasks not correctly stored

in the World Anti-doping Agency data base FSB (Russian secret service) storage room Tainted urine from foreign athletes

Tainted urine samples from Russian athletes Official from the Russian sports ministry validates the Russian samples as being “clean”