Following the athletics federation, the International Weightlifting Federation has become the second sports body to rule out an entire Russian team of the upcoming Rio 2016 Olympics.
After refusing to collectively ban all Russian athletes from Rio 2016 in light of the national doping scheme, the International Olympic Committee gave international sporting federations the authority to selectively decide which Russian athletes are illegible for participating in the games.
The IOC also allowed international federations to apply their own rules to sanction entire national federations. The International Weightlifting Federation has therefore chosen to prohibit the Russian Weightlifting Federation’s athletes and technical officials from participating in the 2016 Olympics.
The IWF has based its verdict on the IOC’s decision concerning Russians participating in the Olympic Games, the McLaren Report, doping statistics, anti-doping policies and the Olympic Charter, after communicating with the IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The Russian Olympic Committee had nominated eight weightlifters for Rio 2016. Based on the IOC’s decision to prohibit any athlete with prior anti-doping violations from competing in Rio, two Russian weightlifters were ruled out.
Four additional Russian weightlifters were implicated in the McLaren Report – which had proven an extensive Russian state-run doping program – as beneficiaries of the doping scheme. They were barred from participating in the 2016 Olympics, based on the IOC’s ruling, “Nobody implicated (in the report), be it an athlete, an official, or an NF, may be accepted for entry or accreditation for the Olympic Games.”
The decision was also triggered by the seven confirmed Russian doping cases revealed by the reanalysis of samples from the London 2012 and Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.
“The IWF Executive Board confirmed that the Russian Weightlifting Federation and Russian weightlifters brought the weightlifting sport into disrepute,” the IWF declared. “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The IWF has therefore reallocated the Olympic berths that were withdrawn from Russian weightlifters to eight different nations.
On the other hand, according to RT, President of the Russian Weightlifting Federation Sergey Syrtsov, said, “Yes, we have sinned, but not to the extent of getting banned from the Olympics. Moreover, not only our country has problems [with doping].”
In response to IWF's sanction, Inside the Games reports that Russia has announced that it will appeal against the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.