Entire Russian team will be banned from Olympics
Judo star tells of battle to recover after Vietnam bike horror ‘Competitive spirit’ and her martial arts training prove vital
THE entire Russian Olympic team will today be banned from competing at the Rio Games next month, The Mail on Sunday understands.
According to well-placed sources, the International Olympic Committee will punish all 387 Russian sportsmen and women in the strongest possible way after revelations of their country’s state-sponsored doping programme shocked the world.
The country’s corrupt track and field stars have already been banned from the Games, and last week lost a desperate legal challenge to overturn that decision.
But today’s ruling – the most momentous in Olympic history – will see Russia’s medal hopes in cycling, judo, wrestling and all other disciplines excluded from competition in the wake of the scandal.
The controversy involved President Vladimir Putin’s sports ministry handing out cocktails of steroids and covering up tainted urine samples ahead of the 2012 London Olympics.
As well as excluding Russian athletes from the forthcoming Games, senior IOC figures are also advocating a ban for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea. An Olympic insider told the MoS: ‘The IOC want to ban Russia to show [doping] is an assault on the whole of sport.
‘That effectively means expulsion from Rio. But Thomas Bach (the IOC president) also wants to give consideration to the rights of individuals.’
To this end, a small number of Russian athletes who train abroad, subject to stringent anti-doping procedures and demonstrably free of Russia’s sphere of corruption, may be offered a lifeline to compete in Rio under a neutral flag.
It is understood that the Committee, based in Lausanne, Switzerland, will ask each international federation, the bodies responsible for individual Olympic sports, to examine the personal merits of potential Russian athletes, to assess whether they can compete as exceptional cases.
Two have already received dispensation to compete in Brazil – Yuliya Stepanova, the 800m runner and a key whistleblower in the doping scandal, and long jumper Darya Klishina, who is based and tested in Florida.
A spokesman for the IOC said: ‘The IOC Executive Board is meeting tomorrow to discuss the participation of Russian athletes in Rio. We intend to send a statement with the decision just after the proceedings.’
The IOC’s bombshell decision is likely to enrage Mr Putin, but it is unclear whether he and other Russian dignitaries will boycott the Games.
TO win a medal in the 2014 Commonwealth Games, she beat some of the fiercest and most skilful competition in the world.
But less than two years later, judo star Stephanie Inglis faced a tougher battle: the fight for her life.
The 27-year-old was critically injured when she was dragged by her clothing from a motorbike in an accident in Vietnam.
Doctors gave her only a 1 per cent chance of survival and for five weeks she lay in a coma.
Touched by her plight, complete strangers helped raise more than £300,000 to pay for her urgent treatment and fly her home to Scotland.
Now, after making an incredible recovery that has stunned her medical team and delighted her family, Miss Inglis has revealed how the same determination that won her a silver medal has also helped on her journey back to health.
Writing exclusively for The Scottish Mail on Sunday from the hospital where she continues to recover, she said she was ‘overwhelmed’ by the generosity of those who helped fund her return to Scotland.
Although her memories of the crash are non-existent – erased by the trauma suffered by her brain and body – she is firmly focused on getting better.
Doctors have warned Miss Inglis that her physical and mental injuries will take time to heal, but her amazing progress and undefeated positivity will be welcomed by the thousands of people who have been moved by her ordeal.
She said: ‘I was always pushing myself to be the best I could be and never settled.
‘So in a way I have to thank judo for shaping this mentality as I came to terms with my accident.
‘I think my competitive spirit has helped my recovery. I am just determined to get better.’
Mother Alison, 52, also talked of her daughter’s ‘miraculous’ improvements as she and husband Robert, 54, himself a judo veteran, hoped they could finally collect her from hospital and bring her home to Daviot, Inverness-shire, in the coming days.
Miss Inglis was taking a break to recuperate after a knee reconstruction and had travelled to Vietnam, where she took a temporary post teaching children English.
On May 11, she was caught up in a horrific accident while riding pillion on a motorcyle taxi on her way to work. It seems her skirt became caught in the back wheel, dragging her from the vehicle and causing life-threatening head injuries.
Mrs Inglis recalled: ‘One of her teacher friends contacted us to say Stephanie had been in an accident.
‘We were messaging back and forth but as it started to unfold we realised we had to board a flight and get over there.
‘We didn’t know very much, just that she had been in an accident that involved a motorcycle. It was a long flight – about 23 hours – and I feared the worst. When I got there, the worst was the worst.’
The couple were forced to spend time filling out forms before they could see their daughter but when they did, she was in an induced coma and looked ‘peaceful’.
Doctors, however, warned the couple that their daughter’s life was hanging in the balance.
‘It’s a parent’s worst nightmare,’ Mrs Inglis said. ‘You always hear or read about these things and don’t imagine that would ever happen to you but when it does, you just live in a haze. You don’t even live, you just survive. How we got through I have no idea. You’ve got no option but to draw breath, then breathe again and again and the minutes turn into hours, the hours turn into days.’
The parents had to assure hospital staff they could fund Miss Inglis’ care. Although she had travel insurance, the policy was deemed invalid and each day in the ward cost £2,000.
While they struggled to make
‘I am just determined to get better’
sense of the awful situation, friend and fellow judoka Khalid Gehlan set up an online fundraising page, gathering vast sums in only a few days.
With the finance secured and following transfer to an intensive care unit in Hanoi, doctors performed the operation that saved Miss Inglis life – a craniotomy – to open part of her skull and relieve the extreme pressure on her brain.
Her mother said: ‘Without the money she wouldn’t be here; if we couldn’t have paid the bills, she wouldn’t have received treatment.
‘The doctors didn’t hold out an awful lot of hope for her but I think Stephanie, with her sporting background, her strength – that pulled her through.’
Two weeks after the accident, Miss Inglis, who won silver in the women’s 57kg event in the Glasgow 2014
‘My first thought when I woke was, where am I?’