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Russia’s Track and Field Athletes Banned From Rio Olympics Amid Doping Conspiracy

Russian track and field athletes banned Olympics
Russia’s Yelena Isinbaeva celebrates with a flag after setting a new world record in the women’s pole vault final during the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

A historic first. Russia’s track and field team has officially been banned from the 2016 Olympics for alleged state-sponsored doping.

The International Association of Athletics Federations, the global governing body for track and field, decided in a unanimous vote Friday, June 17, that the Russian athletes will not be allowed to compete in the upcoming international games, despite numerous pleas from Russia’s ministry of sport to reconsider. (The suspension was initially imposed on the Russian team in November; the announcement Friday extends the ban to the Olympic games.)

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According to The New York Times, Russia’s sports minister Vitaly Mutko released an open letter to the IAAF just hours before the vote was to take place on Friday, writing that “Russia fully supports fighting doping” and noting that the country would take it upon itself to conduct more rigorous drug testing on its athletes.

In response, global track officials said Friday that athletes who could “clearly and convincingly show they are not tainted by the Russian system” would be allowed to petition to compete for a neutral team. (This would include those athletes who have not been living in the country or were tested outside of Russia.)

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“Two or five or 100 negative tests do not mean an athlete is clean,” Rune Andersen, chairman of the IAAF task force that is monitoring Russia, said Friday. “The crack in the door is quite narrow.”

The IAAF’s decision to ban Russian athletes from competing in any track and field events is historic. Previously, individuals were barred for flouting Olympic rules about doping, but never entire nations.

Nations have been banned before for geopolitical reasons: The losing nations were barred after both World Wars, and South Africa was banned from 1964 to 1988 due to apartheid.

Related: PHOTOS: Biggest Olympics Scandals Ever

In May, an extensive report in The New York Times detailed the allegedly wide-reaching doping culture that Russia reportedly cultivated and covered up over the years, including deeply entrenched conspiracies within the Russian government itself.

“People are celebrating Olympic champion winners, but we are sitting crazy and replacing their urine,” Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, the former director of Russia’s antidoping laboratory, told the Times. “Can you imagine how Olympic sport is organized?”

The IAAF’s Friday decision will be discussed by the International Olympic Committee on Tuesday, June 21, and could potentially be overturned, the Times reports, though a reversal would be unusual.

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