UPDATED - Federations Address Russian Athletes Eligibility

(ATR) The Badminton World Federation will allow its four Russian athletes qualified for Rio to compete at the Games while also approving its two alternates.

Vladimir Malkov, Natalya Perminova, Vladimir Ivanov and Ivan Sozonov as well as the first reserve Vitaly Durkin and Nina Vislova have all received the WBF confirmation and will be taken into account in the drawing procedures.

"The entire team is impatient and excited to see the process over in order to get back to a normal psychological regime in the very last stage of the selection, which turned out to be so hard for the whole team," said National Badminton Federation of Russia president Andrei Antropov.

The World Sailing board of directors has approved six Russian athletesthat will be allowed to compete at Rio while barring one athlete fromthe competition.

Pavel Sozykin is the only Russian sailor not admitted by World Sailing.Sozykin’s name was implicated in the McLaren report and because hecompetes in a two-person race classification, the ROC will have theopportunity to nominate another athlete to take his place.

"There is, however, no room in sailing for athletes who seek to gain anunfair advantage through the use of banned substances or who attempt tomanipulate or subvert the anti-doping system," said World Sailing chiefexecutive Andy Hunt.

With Russian president Vladimir Putin as honorary president of theInternational Judo Federation, there was little doubt that IJF chief MariusVizer would clear the country’s judokas for Rio, according to the IOC’seligibility rules.

All 11 Russians, seven male and four female, will go to Rio, Vizerconfirmed to Reuters, insisting they had been drug tested many times athome and abroad since last September.

"I sincerely hope that those athletes who are clean and have no doping records will be able to participate at the Olympic Games, as they have trained hard and, according to available evidence, have not participated in any form of doping," said IJF president Marius Vizer.

The International Weightlifting Federation will decide the fate of eightRussian weightlifters with the possibility of a ban of the entire team.

The federation announced on June 22 that Russia would lose two quotaplaces for the Rio Games because of doping violations. IWF stated thatif the testing of 'B' samples proved to confirm that if any country hadthree or more violations in the 2008 and 2012 Olympic re-testingprogram, the country would be suspended from international competitionfor one year, thus being excluded from Rio alongside the alreadysuspended Bulgaria.

IWF clarified that after re-testing 'A' samples from 2008 and 2012 thatthe three countries thereby scheduledfor suspension were Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus. Russia moved toappeal their decision as well in the Court of Arbitration for Sport onJuly 6.

Maria Verchenova is the lone Russian golfer entered for Rio, havingqualified among 60 players based on the International Golf Federationworld rankings.

The International Golf Federation tells Around the Rings it isreviewing and evaluation criteria set forth by the IOC on Sunday inregards to Verchenova - who is based in Moscow - but there is no exacttimeframe for a decision.

In an interview with ATR at the Ladies European Tour Event in Pilsen, Czech Republic last month, Verchenova offered her opinion on doping.

"I think the main thing is it's a political issue - they've been lookingafter the Russian athletes a lot and making sure they are not on thedoping list," Verchenova said.

"To be honest, I can't even understand how cyclists and runners can notbe on doping because it is unbelievably hard to do such an amount ofdistance, like in the Tour de France.

"It is a shame, because our team is getting smaller and smaller - Ireally hope we have a few athletes on the team that can get somemedals."

The International Shooting Sport Federation will allow its Russian athletes to compete at the Rio 2016 Olympics following a unanimous vote by its executive committee.

The ISSF says the 18 Russian shooters who were entered by the Russian Olympic Committee have not previously tested positive for doping and were not included in the recently published McLaren report. The McLaren report identified three samples from Russian shooters who had tested positive for doping in the past.

The federation will now send its evidence and relevant documents over to the IOC for final approval.

Modern Pentathlon has barred two Russians from the Rio Games.

The federation’s executive board said that as Maksim Kustov and Ilia Frolov "were responsible for samples labelled as ‘Disappearing Positive Methodology’", they would miss Rio.

"According to the McLaren report, both athletes tested positive for trenbolone, methenolone and oxandrolone when the samples were analyzed in a Moscow laboratory in August 2014 but the findings were not reported as such," the federation said.

The other three athletes on the Russian team were deemed eligible to compete in Rio based on the IOC’s eligibility rules set out on Sunday.

The Rio 2016 Games begin Aug. 5 and conclude Aug. 21.

Written by Kevin Nutley, Mark Bisson and Brian Pinelli

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