WADA: Russian track athletes should be independent at Games

The World Anti-Doping Agency sided against international Olympic officials Wednesday in a statement supporting track and field’s decision to bar Russian athletes from competing under their own flag at the upcoming Summer Games.

The statement, delivered by WADA President Craig Reedie, who is also an IOC member, further scrambled the positions of the world’s foremost sports organizations on an issue that track’s federation, the IAAF, initially portrayed as having support from all sides.

On Friday, the IAAF barred the Russian track team from competing at the Rio Games. It changed its rules to clear the way for a few Russian athletes to participate under an independent flag, providing they show they’ve been subject to doping controls outside Russia.

The IAAF said it had support of the IOC on the ruling.

On Tuesday, the IOC countered that decision, saying Russian athletes who were cleared had no choice but to compete as part of the Russian Olympic committee team. Then, Wednesday’s statement from WADA and Reedie said “WADA strongly believes that the IAAF decision must be upheld as it was articulated on 17 June.”

Samuel Dorman and Michael Hixon hurt Troy Dumais’ historic Olympic bid at the U.S. diving trials in Indianapolis. Dorman and Hixon finished first to claim the berth on the Rio team in the men’s synchro 3-meter, with Dumais and Kristian Ipsen, a Stanford alum, second. For Dumais to make his fifth Olympic team, he must close a 110-point gap in Saturday’s 3-meter final . ... Indiana teammates Jessica Parratto and Amy Cozad won the women’s synchro 10-meter.

Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus face one-year suspensions from international weightlifting competition following the retesting of samples from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics, which may prevent lifters from those countries competing in Rio. Four Olympic gold medalists from Kazakhstan and medalists from Russia, Ukraine and Belarus already have been provisionally suspended by the IWF.