LAUSANNE, Switzerland: Sport’s highest tribunal rejected on Thursday Russia’s appeal against a doping ban for its entire athletics team from the Rio Olympics starting in 15 days’ time, drawing swift and angry condemnation from Moscow.
The decision by the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) increases the possibility that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will now exclude Russia from all sports, not just track and field, in Rio de Janeiro.
That would mark the deepest crisis in the Olympic movement since the US and Soviet boycotts of the 1980s, and would be a grave blow to a nation that prides itself on its status as a sporting superpower.
“CAS rejects the claims/appeal of the Russian Olympic Committee and 68 Russian athletes,” CAS said in a statement that backed the decision of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to suspend the Russian athletics federation.
Russia is one of the world’s foremost sporting powers which won the third biggest overall medal haul at the last summer Olympics in 2012 — though some of those results are now in question because of doping suspicions.
Double Olympic champion pole vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva called the decision “the funeral of athletics”.
“Now let all these foreign pseudo-clean sports people sigh with relief and win their pseudo-gold medals in our absence,” Isinbayeva wrote on Instagram. “They have always feared (our) strength.”
The ban on Russia’s track-and-field team going to Rio was imposed last November by the IAAF after an independent report uncovered rampant state-sponsored doping in Russian athletics.
It was maintained in June after the IAAF Council ruled that not enough progress had been made in transforming Russia’s anti-doping programme.
Russia had argued it had taken steps to clean up the sport, and that the blanket ban was unfair to individual athletes with no record of doping.
Russian officials, and many ordinary people in the country, have interpreted the doping allegations as part of a conspiracy inspired by Western governments who fear Moscow’s growing influence.
A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry called the court decision “a crime against sport”.
With its decision, the court was “absolutely violating the rights of clean athletes, creating a precedent of collective responsibility”, Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said in comments televised on state channels.
The ball is now in the court of the IOC to decide whether Russia should be excluded from all sports at the Rio Games, starting on August 5.
Pressure on the IOC to take such a step increased this week after another report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency revealed evidence of systematic state-sponsored doping by Russian competitors before and during the 2014 Winter Olympics in the Russian city of Sochi.
The IOC is expected to reach a final decision on Sunday.
The IAAF said it was pleased that CAS had supported its stance. “While we are thankful that our rules and our power to uphold our rules and the anti-doping code have been supported, this is not a day for triumphant statements,” IAAF president Sebastian Coe said.
“I didn’t come into this sport to stop athletes from competing. It is our federation’s instinctive desire to include, not exclude.”
Originally, 68 Russians had appealed against the IAAF ban but the governing body has cleared US-based long jumper Darya Klishina to compete in Rio as a neutral.
The IOC and the CAS decision said that Klishina could compete under the Russian flag.
An IOC ethics commission is to rule on the case of Yuliya Stepanova, an 800m runner who gave evidence about the doping.
The CAS ruling has been the focus of Olympic attention, however, since an independent WADA report this week said Russia ran a “state-dictated failsafe system” of drug cheating in 30 sports at the 2014 Sochi Games and other major events.
Russia was the second most successful athletics nation at the 2012 London Olympics, behind the United States, with seven gold medals, four silver and five bronze.
Originally, Russia had 17 medals. But several are already at risk because of doping failures.
Olympic 3,000 metre champion Yulia Zarapova has tested positive for anabolic steroids and will almost certainly be stripped of her gold medal.
Woman’s discus thrower Darya Pishchalnikova, silver medallist in London, has been banned for 10 years because of drug failures.
The IOC has not yet reconfirmed the results of the London Olympics following the retesting of doping samples.
Coe said that after the Rio Games, an IAAF task force “will continue to work with Russia to establish a clean safe environment for its athletes so that its federation and team can return to international recognition and competition.”