Russian national team to be "absolutely transparent" at 2016 Olympics - sports minister

MOSCOW, March 24. /TASS/. Steps made by Russia today in cleaning the national sports from doping abuse guarantee that the country’s team at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Brazil will be "absolutely transparent," Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told TASS on Thursday. "We will have an absolutely transparent team by the time of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro," Mutko said in an interview with TASS. "And if those various British newspapers and all others, who ‘dearly love’ our country still have any doubts, they must be cast aside since the Russian sport today is under a full control from the outside." "This is how it used to be as well and all speculations about its secluded nature were ungrounded," he said. "Eighty percent of the country’s national team had always been in the national pool. Always." UK daily The Times reported on Wednesday that, according to its own investigations, Russian swimmers had been systematically consuming banned performance enhancing drugs in recent years. According to The Times, its investigations "uncovered an alarming picture of systematic drug use" in Russian swimming over the past decade. In the further development of events, a group of Russian field and track athletes were stripped on Thursday of all their titles and medals they won between 2009 and 2013, including one gold and one silver medals of the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London, for anti-doping rules violations. The decision was made following a ruling of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, which on Thursday upheld an appeal from the IAAF against six Russian athletes and the Russian Anti-Doping Agency (RUSADA). Six Russians in the case are titled field and trackers Sergey Kirdyapkin, Sergey Bakulin, Olga Kaniskina, Valery Borchin, Vladimir Kanaikin and Yulia Zaripova. In March 2015 the IAAF announced its disagreement with RUSADA’s decision to suspend a a group of Russian athletes for doping-related violations selectively annulling results of the field and trackers at the issue. The IAAF insisted that all results of the banned athletes must be annulled beginning from the start of their suspensions and filed an appeal with the CAS against RUSADA’s decision. The CAS viewed the appeal on Thursday and stated in its subsequent ruling: "The IAAF challenged what it felt was a "selective" disqualification of results, submitting that all results achieved by the athletes from the date of their first abnormal sample to the date they accepted a provisional suspension should be disqualified." "In each case, the appeal filed by the IAAF has been upheld and the decision issued by the Disciplinary Anti-Doping Committee of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency for each athlete has been modified." Among the annulled results on Thursday are the 2012 Olympic gold in men’s 50 km walk, won by Kirdyapkin and the 2012 Olympic silver in women’s 20 km walk, won by Kaniskina. Race walker Sergey Bakulin and runner Yulia Zaripova were deprived of their gold medals of the 2011 IAAF World Championship. Although having lost two Olympic medals on Thursday, the Russian national team maintained its fourth place in the overall medal standings of the 2012 Summer Games in London now having 22 gold, 24 silver and 32 bronze medals, behind the United States (46-28-29), China (28-30-21) and Great Britain (29-17-19). Read more