Russian Olympics team continues to take shape with fencers declared eligible

Russia’s Olympic team continued to take shape on Wednesday as fencing became the latest sport to declare the country’s athletes eligible for Rio.

Fencing’s world governing body the FIE said it had “re-examined the results” of the drug tests taken by the 16-strong Russian team over the last two years and all were negative.

Russia won two silvers and a bronze in the fencing competition at London 2012.

Fencing joins archery, badminton, equestrian, judo, shooting and tennis in clearing all of Russia’s proposed athletes for the Rio Olympics, which starts on August 5th.

Each international federation responsible for a sport in the summer Games was asked by the International Olympic Committee on Sunday to individually vet the anti-doping records of its Russian athletes before clearing them to compete.

This followed Canadian law professor Richard McLaren’s explosive report into state-directed doping throughout Russian Olympic and Paralympic sport.

McLaren uncovered hundreds of positive drug tests that had been covered up by the Moscow anti-doping laboratory under orders from the Russian ministry of sport.

Fencing accounted for four manipulated tests but the FIE said the 16 selected Russian fencers had been tested in 35 different countries between 2014-16, including last month in Poland at the European Championships.

Regarding the testing in Poland, the FIE said in a statement: “All 24 samples returned negative results from an independent externally-appointed laboratory in Dresden, Germany.”

Other sports, however, have followed the International Association of Athletics Federation’s example and taken a much harder line on Russian eligibility.

The IAAF banned the Russian athletics federation in November after an earlier World Anti-Doping Agency-funded report uncovered systemic doping in Russia’s track and field programme, and upheld that ban last month.

It was the first sport to individually assess each Russian athlete on the basis of a reversal of the “presumption of innocence” and only one of Russia’s proposed 68-strong team has been declared eligible for Rio.

Late on Tuesday, World Rowing followed suit by banning 22 of Russia’s 28 rowers.

Rowing’s international federation FISA said those banned were not “considered to have participated in doping” but had not been tested enough times outside of Russia, where the anti-doping system has been proven to be corrupt.

This ruling means Russia loses four of the boats it qualified — with those places going to Australia (women’s eight), Greece (men’s four) and Italy (women’s sculls and men’s eight) — and can only now form a men’s four with the six eligible rowers it has left.

The International Canoe Federation was another sport to block several Russians, in its case five sprint canoeists, including London 2012 men's K2 champion Alexander Dyachenko.

The ICF, however, had been expected to crack down even harder having issued one-year bans to Belarus and Romania earlier this month for repeated doping violations.

But there was better news for Russia on Tuesday from judo and shooting, with International Judo Federation president Marius Vizer saying all 11 judokas should be considered eligible and the International Shooting Sport Federation's executive committee clearing all 18 Russian competitors.

Russia won only one bronze medal in the shooting at London 2012 but claimed three golds, a silver and a bronze in judo. They were the first Olympic judo gold medals the country had ever won.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is the IJF's honorary president.

World Sailing blocked one athlete, 470 class sailor Pavel Sozykin, but Russia will be allowed to call up a reserve and the other six sailors were declared eligible.

Russia initially selected 387 athletes for Rio, approximately 50 fewer than recent summer Games’, but has already lost almost 90 of those in the vetting process.

The total size of Russia’s team nudged closer to 200 when the International Triathlon Union cleared the three men and three women the nation had qualified for that competition.

The ITU said none of the six was mentioned in McLaren’s report or has served a ban before, and all of them have been tested by non-Russian anti-doping agencies.

A similar statement is expected from volleyball’s international federation shortly, which would leave boxing, cycling, golf, gymnastics, handball, table tennis, taekwondo, weightlifting and wrestling as the last sports to confirm their decisions on Russian athletes.