Today is the deadline for applications that the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) receives from the Russian athletes who intend to participate in the international competitions, including the Olympics in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro. It will be allowed to participate in the games those athletes who are able to prove their innocence to the Russian anti-doping system and doping scandals.
The Russian Olympic Committee has recently filed a lawsuit in the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Lausanne, which insists on the abolition of a number of criteria for testing athletes, including the requirement to the athlete to live abroad.
Layer of Russian athletes, Ivan Melnikov, stated in an interview with a ‘VK’ correspondent that the situation around the Russian athletes is extremely politicized: "Our foreign colleagues are trying to put pressure on Russia. We are in a state of information warfare. Sport is one of the achievements of any country, it shows how the state is strong. They found weak spots and started to beat us."
According to Melnikov, the majority of Russian athletes did not take dope, "They are not to blame, but to them our western colleagues are trying to exert pressure. The leadership of IAAF should resign after such scandals. This is a clear discrimination against our athletes. There don’t checked and try to take away medals from athletes of other states, and focused all their efforts on how to take our medals and revise the results of the Olympics. It is ungentlemanly conduct.
The lawyer considers that unjustified claims were filed in respect of his wards with a lot of procedural violations: "In particular, they had to notify athletes beforehand to uncover any trial. But without a notice they opened samples that had been previously opened and no prohibited substances were found. What has changed during 8 years? In my opinion, the claims to the Olympic champion in 2008 looks weird."
Melnikov urged to unite lawyers, experts in both in the field of hematology and Sports Medicine: "We must give the maximum resistance and defend our athletes. Our task is to protect the greatest number of our athletes, thus showing that we are really honest and law-abiding citizens. It is necessary to attract the maximum attention from the outside, including the Western public. In this case many foreign officials will be afraid to act in unsporting and unfair way in respect of us."
Speaking about precedents of this kind, the lawyer stated that in the middle of the XX century the German athletes were not allowed to participate in the Games: "But then there were the Nazis to power. We are now equated with the Nazi regime, trying to compare Russian athletes with all evil in the world. And it is a wrong stand."
Probably, it was ahead of the Berlin Olympics in 1936 when the International Conference in support of the Olympic ideas took place in Paris. It was announced there about the compatibility of the Olympic principles and the fact of the Games in a totalitarian racist state. The conference participants urged all the people of good will who share the ideas of Olympus to boycott the Olympic Games in Berlin.
