La Russia will participate in Rio games. In the end, the International Olympic Committee took the soft line, deciding not to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee after the doping scandal which swept the Moscow sport.
The decision on Russian athletes will have to be made on a case-by-case basis and will be up to the individual international sports federations. For example the Jaaf, after the Tas of Lausanne rejected the appeal of 68 athletes (including the multiple pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva) to participate in the Olympics despite the suspension of the Moscow athletics federation, it will be able to select suitable athletes.
In any case, the Russian committee will not be able to bring to Brazil any athlete of any discipline who has ever received a doping disqualification, even if he has served his sentence in full. No games, therefore, for the nineteenth-century Yulia Stepanova, whose revelations have opened the Pandora's box of Russian doping.
The president of the IOC Thomas Bach he explained that the athletes who will go to the Olympics will be subjected to rigorous controls: “We were guided by the fundamental principle of the Olympic Charter – he added -, which protects clean athletes and the integrity of sport. However, it is necessary to distinguish between collective and individual responsibilities”.
The world of Russian sport has welcomed the decision of the IOC, judged by the Minister of Sport Vitali Mutko as an "objective choice, adopted in the interest of the sporting world and for the unity of the Olympic family".
