Putin slams ‘indiscriminate disqualification’
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin hit out at “discrimination” against the country’s banned track and field athletes at a Kremlin send-off ceremony Wednesday for its depleted Olympic team.
Fencers and triathletes became the latest team of Russians to be cleared to compete in the Olympics by their sports’ governing bodies ahead of the Moscow ceremony, but the IAAF rejected a bid by the bulk of the track and field team to be reinstated.
More than 100 Russians from the 387strong Olympic team have been banned so far from going to Rio de Janeiro.
“We can’t accept indiscriminate disqualification of our athletes with an absolutely clean doping history,” Putin said. “We cannot and will not accept what in fact is pure discrimination.”
Putin said the athletes banned from the Olympics were victims of a campaign to present Russian sports in a bad light. He spoke with two-time Olympic pole-vaulting champion Yelena Isinbayeva, the most high-profile of the 67 track and field athletes banned from the games, standing beside him.
Tina Charles scored 17 points and Maya Moore added 13 to help the U.S. women’s basketball team beat France 84-62 on t in an exhibition game.
The game was a rematch of the 2012 London Olympics gold medal game that the Americans won 86-50. This time the U.S. took a half to get going, which wasn’t a total surprise as the Americans have had little training since getting together for the first time as a full team Saturday in Los Angeles.
They played Monday against a U.S. select team, winning by four, before flying across country for this three-game exhibition series. France’s core has been together for months qualifying for Rio in a last chance tournament in June.
Eleven weightlifters, including three Russian medalists, have tested positive for banned drugs in the latest retests of samples from the 2012 London Olympics, the International Weightlifting Federation said.
The IWF said in a statement that all 11 athletes, six of whom were medalists, had been provisionally suspended until their cases are closed.
Four of the 11 are Russians, who all tested positive for dehydrochlormethyltestosterone, an anabolic steroid.
The positive Russian tests came from Alexandr Ivanov, silver medalist in the men’s 94-kilogram division; Nataliya Zabolotnaya, silver in the women’s 75-kilogram division; Svetlana Tzarukaeva, silver in the women’s 63-kilogram division; and Andrey Demanov, who placed fourth in the men’s 94-kilogram division. Ivanov also tested positive for tamoxifen, a hormone modulator. Center Anderson Varejao will miss the Olympics for host Brazil because of a herniated disk in his lower back. — Wire services