Rio 2016: Russian athletes to have fate decided by three IOC chiefs with Opening Ceremony on the horizon
THREE Olympic chiefs will make the final decisions on Russian athletes competing in Rio.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has appointed German Claudia Bokel, Turkey's Ugur Erdener and Juan Antonio Samaranch of Spain.
They will be looking to check no athlete with previous doping convictions or who anyone implicated in the McLaren Report which found evidence of Cold War style state-sponsored doping in Russia is selected.
Bokel is chair of the IOC Athletes' Commission while Erderner is head of the IOC Medical Commission. Samaranch is the son of the former president of the IOC.
But both Erdener and Samaranch are close allies of IOC President Thomas Bach who stopped short last weekend of a blanket ban on the entire Russian team.
Erdener is a also a member of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) Foundation Board, as well as President of World Archery. But Turkey is among the countries flagged up as having a problem with testing itself along with the likes of Kenya and Morocco.
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Unlike WADA President Sir Craig Reedie, who was barred from participating in the decision on Russian eligibility last week, the IOC have bizarrely ruled that Erdener does not have a conflict of interest. Instead it claims that Erdener, unlike Sir Craig, has not made his opinions known publicly.
More than 250 Russians have currently been deemed eligible to compete.
In total, 119 Russians have so far been banned including 68 in athletics and the entire weightlifting team.
All decisions are expected to be made before the Opening Ceremony in Rio on Friday.