Today the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) announced a final decision not to allow the Russian athletes to compete at the Paralympic Games 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, despite the appeal of the Russian side on the decision of the International Paralympic Committee (IPS), which previously had not allowed our athletes to participate in the Games because of doping.
Vice-President of the European Cycling Federation Aleksander Gusyatnikov said in an interview with a Vestnik Kavkaza correspondent that now the Russian Paralympic athletes have almost no chance to take part in the Games in Brazil.
"I had a conversation with Germans and French. They had a lot of negative in respect of our Paralympians, even more than our Olympic team, although there are trends that support Russian athletes. I think that in any case it is wrong to ban all the Olympic and Paralympic teams. The Olympic movement should be free movement of ‘clean’ athletes. There should be no collective responsibility for the mistakes of individual athletes," he said.
Recall that WADA Independent Commission released a report on July 18th about the alleged anti-doping system in Russia at the state level. According to the report, 35 positive samples of Russian Paralympians disappeared in 2012-2015. After that WADA recommended IPS remove Russian Paralympic from the competitions. On August 7th, the Committee adopted the recommendation of the Agency, and the Russian Paralympic Committee filed a complaint against this decision to CAS.
