The only Russian track and field athlete due to compete at the Rio Olympics has been banned by the sport’s governing body on the eve of competition.
The long jumper Darya Klishina was the only Russian athlete to receive special dispensation from the International Association of Athletics Federations to compete after the rest of the country’s track and field team was banned in the wake of the state‑sponsored doping scandal documented by Wada’s two independent reports.
The IAAF had said that any athletes who could prove they were untainted by the Russian system could be cleared to compete, with only the US-based Klishina passing the test out of a possible team of 68 athletes.
However, on the eve of competition the IAAF received new information that has led to her exceptional-eligibility status being revoked. Klishina is challenging the decision at the court of arbitration for sport.
“I am a clean athlete and have proved that already many times and beyond any doubt,” she said in a statement. “Based in the US for three years now, I have been almost exclusively tested outside of the anti-doping system in question. I am falling victim to those who created a system of manipulating our beautiful sport and is guilty of using it for political purposes. I will take every possible effort to protect my clean image as an athlete.
“At this moment I cannot help but feel betrayed by a system that is not focused on keeping the sport clean and supporting rank-and-file athletes, but rather seeking victories outside sport arenas.”
Alexander Zhukov, the Russian Olympic Committee president, condemned the IAAF decision. “Overall, all of this looks like a mockery of the athlete by the IAAF,” he said in a video message posted by the ROC.
After the International Olympic Committee ruled that individual federations should rule on the eligibility of their athletes, and various Russians challenged their bans at Cas, a total of 268 athletes were cleared to compete.
Klishina, a two-time European indoor champion and gold medallist at the 2013 World Student Games in Kazan, has been based in Florida since signing a contract with the global sports agency IMG in 2011.
The IAAF banned Russia’s athletics federation in November last year after an earlier Wada-sponsored investigation revealed widespread cheating in the country’s track and field programme.
That ban was upheld in June and 67 of Russia’s intended 68-strong team for Rio were declared ineligible by the IAAF last month. Klishina was the sole exception, as she lives and trains abroad and was drug-tested there by what the IAAF referred to as a “credible anti-doping agency”.
However, Russian media are now reporting she has been linked to the state-run doping programme that was uncovered by the second Wada investigation, led by the Canadian law professor Richard McLaren. His report revealed that hundreds of positive tests by Russian athletes, from nearly all Olympic and Paralympics sports, were covered up by the Moscow anti-doping laboratory between 2011 and 2015 at the behest of the Russian sports ministry.
Klishina, who also has a budding modelling career, has kept a low profile in recent weeks after she received personal abuse via social media from Russians who considered her to be a “traitor” for going to the Games, where she was to compete as a neutral rather than in her country’s colours.
