Twenty-eight Russian athletes have had their Olympic doping bans overturned by sport’s highest tribunal, sparking a war of words between Moscow and the Olympic authorities over whether they can compete in the Winter Games beginning next week in South Korea.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport yesterday upheld the appeals of the 28 and said there was “insufficient” evidence that they committed doping violations at the previous Winter Olympics, held in the Russian resort of Sochi in 2014.
This followed the International Olympic Committee’s decision in December to ban 43 Russian athletes from the Olympics and strip them of their Sochi medals after the country’s “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system in 2014.