Russian athletes welcome individual doping evaluations

Russian athletes on Tuesday welcomed a decision to individually evaluate them for doping before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in August.

According to IOC President, Thomas Bach on Tuesday, every athlete from Russia and Kenya expecting to take part in the Olympics will have to be evaluated individually for doping and be cleared by their sports international body.

The special measure was being introduced, due to the unsatisfactory record of the anti-doping bodies in the two countries.

At a track and field competition in the western Russian city of Cheboksary, Russian athletes were pleased.

“I have spent some time studying the facts and figures, and they are entirely on our side. But there were emotions, hype and unprecedented media pressure completely against us, and you can see what weighed down the scale. But I am happy that common sense and compromise prevailed,” said Russian hurdler Sergey Shubenkov.

“This is a small gulp of air that I believed should be used to the full. It is clear that we were a bit discriminated against. But anyway we should fight for every possibility that we have,” said Russian high-jumper Andrey Silnov.

The IOC called on the World Anti-Doping Agency to convene an extraordinary conference on doping in 2017 for a frank talk on the controversies surrounding doping.

Reuters