Russia's judo team get green light to compete at Rio Olympics
By SSN HQ
Last Updated: 26/07/16 7:08pm
The International Judo Federation - which lists Russian President Vladimir Putin as its honorary president - is to allow Russia's 11 judo competitors to participate at the Rio Olympics.
The International Olympic Committee has left it up to the world governing bodies of each sport to decide if Russian teams can go to Rio in the wake of Richard McLaren's damning report into state-sponsored doping.
And judo has joined tennis in allowing the country's athletes to compete in Brazil following the decisions of track and field, swimming and rowing to ban Russian athletes.
Putin is a judo blackbelt and in addition to his role at the federation, one of his closest friends sits on its executive committee, but Federation president Marius Vizer said neither factor played any role in its decisions.
"All those athletes have been tested starting from September last year until the end of May, on many occasions, at many international judo events, not in Russia, abroad from Russia," Vizer said.
"There was no punishment, no negative evidence, we don't take into consideration any analysis or tests made in Russia, because for us it is not relevant."
An announcement from the International Rowing Federation (FISA) confirmed on Tuesday that only six Russian rowers had been cleared, meaning only their men's coxless four would be able to compete.
FISA had already said on Monday that three rowers did not meet the conditions need to participate in the Games and the sport's governing body added 17 more rowers and a pair of coxes to that list on Tuesday.
The International Canoe Federation earlier ruled that five sprint canoeists - Elena Aniushina, Natalia Podolskaia, Alexander Dyachenko, Andrey Kraitor and Alexey Korovashkov - were ineligible to compete at the Games, although it stopped short of issuing a federation-wide ban.
ICF secretary general, Simon Toulson, said: "This is a bitter blow for the Olympic movement and we are saddened that our sport in implicated. We have taken swift action and removed all offending athletes where doping evidence exists.
"The ICF will continue its strong zero-tolerance stance and remove all athletes that contravene its rules in any way. We are clear that if you step out of line you won't make the start line."
The decision followed a move by swimming's governing body FINA to ban three Russian swimmers, with four more being withdrawn by the Russian Olympic Committee, while rowing's international federation FISA barred three Russian athletes.
Meanwhile, modern pentathletes Ilia Frolov and Maksim Kustov have been barred from competing after both appeared in the McLaren report for failing tests for steroids that were fraudulently recorded as negatives.
Frolov was only a reserve for the team but Kustov's place will now go to Ruslan Nakonechnyi of Latvia.
The three remaining members of Russia's team have been cleared to compete by modern pentathlon's governing body UIPM.
All 18 of Russia's shooting team have also been approved to travel to Rio and six sailors have been given provisional confirmation to compete by World Sailing - Pavel Sozykin has been denied eligibility as he was named in the McLaren report.
