None of the six members of the Russian Olympic Triathlon Team were among the four triathletes named in the recently released McLaren Report and all six will be allowed to compete in the upcoming Rio Olympics, according to the ITU.
On Sunday morning, the International Olympic Committee announced that it would not issue a complete Russian ban in reaction to the report published by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which found that 312 athletes across 29 sports had so-called “disappearing positives” between 2011 and 2015. The IOC instead passed the buck to each sport’s international governing body to decide if athletes were clean and should be allowed to compete in Rio. Earlier today, FINA, swimming’s governing body, announced that seven Russian swimmers would be banned from Rio, including Yulia Efimova, who recently won the world championship in the 100-meter breaststroke.
While the names of the four triathletes mentioned in the McLaren Report were not published, they were provided to the ITU by WADA and none of them are among the six triathletes qualified to represent Russia in Rio. The ITU issued the following statement regarding its decision to allow Russian triathletes to compete at the Olympics:
“ITU has carefully examined the information delivered by WADA and the McLaren report. Additionally, ITU has thoroughly reviewed the criteria set forth by the IOC on Sunday for Russian athletes to compete in the 2016 Rio Olympics. None of the six Russian triathletes (three men, three women) that have qualified for 2016 Olympics are included in the McLaren report, nor have any of them served suspensions or bans for failed doping tests. Additionally, they have all been tested outside of Russia. Therefore, ITU will recommend to the IOC that these six athletes be permitted to compete in Rio next month.
ITU remains steadfast in our commitment to providing athletes a fair competition. We will continue to closely follow the updates from the McLaren report, as well as recommendations from WADA and the IOC on best practices in the fight against doping.”
The six athletes representing Russia at the Olympic Triathlon will be Alexander Bryukhankov, Dmitry Polyanski, Igor Polyanski, Anastasia Abrosimova, Alexandra Razarenova and Mariya Shorets. The men’s race will take place on August 18, with the women to follow on August 20.
