45 Russians lose court bid to join PyeongChang
Matthieu Reeb, CAS Secretary General, at a press conference on Feb. 1, after speaking about Russian athletes who challenged decisions by the Disciplinary Commission of the International Olympic Committee before the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang. / AP-Yonhap
By Ko Dong-hwan
Forty-five Russian athletes and two coaches lost their appeals to join the PyeongChang Winter Olympics after being embroiled in a state-sponsored doping scandal.
“The applications filed by the Russian athletes and coaches have been dismissed,” Matthieu Reeb, Secretary General of the Court of Arbitration for Sport, said at a press conference on Friday. The decision came just hours before the Games’ opening ceremony in the host city in Gangwon Province.
The CAS ruled that the International Olympic Committee’s decision in December not to invite the Russians to the Olympics “could not be described as a sanction but rather as an eligibility decision.”
The applicants had asked the CAS to overturn the IOC’s decision to ban Russia from the PyeongChang Olympics due to the systemic doping scandal. The applicants included South Korean-born speed skater Victor Ah, biathlon gold medalist Anton Shipulin and Sergei Ustyugov, a cross-country skiing world champion.
The IOC welcomed the CAS’s decision, saying the ruling “supports the fight against doping and brings clarity for all athletes.”
Fifteen of the athletes who lost their appeals were among a group of 28 whose controversial life bans from the Olympics were overturned by the CAS due to insufficient evidence.
Besides the Russians who lost appeals, Russia sent 169 athletes who met the anti-doping criteria and were qualified by the IOC to compete as independent Olympic Athletes from Russia (OAR).
The 47 Russians have lodged a case with a Swiss civil court in Lausanne, according to AFP.
Russia was at the center of a doping scandal when it hosted the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics, where it ranked first in the medal standings.
Investigations revealed that tainted Russian urine samples were switched with clean ones overnight using a “mouse hole” in the wall of the anti-doping laboratory in Sochi.
Although Russia denied any political links to the conspiracy, the IOC suspended the nation’s former sports minister, Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko, for life.
The scandal irritated some fellow athletes, who expressed concerns about whether athletes facing doping allegations have the right to compete in the Olympics.
U.S. women’s skeleton athlete Katie Uhlaender said it is great news that the Russians lost their appeals. She finished fourth in the Sochi Olympics, behind Russian bronze medalist Elena Nikitina. The Russian is among the 45 athletes who appealed.
U.S. skeleton veteran John Daly said the Russians should not be allowed in PyeongChang and that “what’s going on now is like something out of a movie.”