Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin is still pretty upset about so many Russian athletes being banned from the Olympics due to doping. While Russia did avoid a straight-up ban, track and field and several individual athletes are still not allowed to compete in Rio.
So what’s an angry prime minister who thinks his country has been discriminated against by drug tests to do? Hold his own games, of course.
On Thursday in Moscow, Putin will host Stars 2016, starring several of the banned athletes from the track and field team, according to a report from Russian news agency TASS.
Russian track-and-field athletes banned from competing in the Rio 2016 Olympics will take part in a domestic tournament organized by the All-Russian Athletics Federation (RAF), Yuri Borzakovsky, the head coach of the Russian athletics squad, told TASS. The Stars-2016 tournament will take place at the Znamensky Brothers stadium in Moscow on July 28.
“About 135 track-and-field athletes are going to compete. They include Olympic champions and medal holders as well as less renowned athletes forbidden to compete in Rio. Pole Vaulter Yelena Isinbayeva will not compete. She has decided to have a rest after such a hard season,” Borzakovsky stressed.
Isinbayeva, a two-time Olympic gold-medalist, took her case to the Court of Arbitration in Sport to try and make her fourth Olympics, but was denied. She’s not alone in wanting to take a break.
This isn’t the first an event like this has happened. In 1984, the Soviet Union and several of its Communist allies boycotted the Olympics held in Los Angeles in response to the U.S. boycott in 1980. The Soviets held the Friendship Games, which drew teams from 49 countries. Surprise, surprise — the USSR won more than two times as many gold medals as East Germany, the country who took second in the medal count.
