Russian lifters are hit with Games ban

RUSSIAN weightlifters will not be allowed to compete at the Olympics after the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) elected to ban them from the upcoming Games.

Having already had two quota places removed for previous doping violations, the IWF ruled that the remaining eight Russians would also not be allowed to compete in Rio following the reanalysis of samples from the Beijing and London Games.

Aside from athletics, where all bar Florida-based Darya Klishina have been banned from competing at Rio, weightlifting is the only other sport to exclude all Russians after each individual governing body was asked to make a call on a sport-by-sport basis.

An IWF statement read: “The integrity of the weightlifting sport 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 decision was made less than 10 days before the weightlifting commences in Rio and the IWF insists it adopted a strong stance following a series of suspicious test results which emerged from the previous two Games.

It continued: “We would like to highlight the extremely shocking and disappointing statistics regarding the Russian weightlifters.

“As of today there are seven confirmed AAFs (adverse analytical findings) for Russian weightlifters from the combined reanalysis process of London and Beijing, while the second wave of Beijing reanalysis is not yet in a stage when the names and countries involved can be publicly disclosed.”

However, that decision will be subject to an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko said.

“Unfortunately, the federation took collective responsibility again and suspended the whole team,” said Mutko.

“What we have now, the CAS is open 24 hours a day, I think that today or tomorrow we will support athletes, including by an appeal.”

Mutko expects Russia to be present in all but five sports at the Games – they did not qualify in basketball, football, hockey and rugby – but with a team heavily reduced from the 387 initially announced.

“At the moment I can tell you we will be present in 29 of the 34 sports, with 266 athletes,” he said.