Russia’s contingent leave for Rio in subdued mood

MOSCOW — A much-depleted Russian team has departed for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, missing dozens of athletes who were excluded amid the country’s doping scandal.

Team members left on a charter flight yesterday from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport to Brazil, a day after an emotional farewell ceremony with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin.

More than 100 athletes from what was originally a 387-strong team have been barred from competing in Rio by international sports federations under sanctions that most Russian athletes consider unfair.

“We’re after medals, that’s it,” said handball player Anna Sen. “We need to fight for those athletes who were disqualified.”

Ignoring what he called “provocations addressed at our team and our mighty country”, volleyball player Sergei Tetyukhin said: “Today, as never before, we need to stay united and become a family.”

No track and field athletes were among the contingent heading for Rio on yesterday’s flight, since the entire track team is banned from competing — except for a single United States-based long jumper — following revelations of widespread doping.

However, the track team did attend the ceremonial farewell with Putin on Wednesday, when the Russian President branded restrictions on Russia “pure discrimination”.

While Russia avoided a blanket ban from the Games at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) board on Sunday, the IOC imposed new restrictions on Russia. International sports federations must now remove any athlete previously banned for doping or who was implicated in last week’s McLaren report alleging a mass cover-up of failed drug tests.

Since the new rules came in, some federations have taken a tough line, with exclusions of much of Russia’s team from events such as rowing, canoeing and swimming.

Other sports, such as judo and tennis, have allowed the entire Russian team in their event to compete. These rulings must still be ratified by the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Russia’s weightlifting team has been dogged by doping cases and faced further embarrassment on Wednesday when retests of samples from the 2012 Olympics saw four Russians test positive.

The Russian lifting team risks being banned from the Rio Games en masse because of the large number of failures in retests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. AP