MOSCOW, February 8 (RAPSI) – The Ad hoc Division of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has dismissed two appeals filed by 15 Russian athletes and coaches, who were not invited by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to participate in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, the court’s press-release reads on Thursday.
The applications were filed respectively by six athletes: Tatyana Borodulina, Pavel Kulizhnikov, Alexander Loginov, Irina Starykh, Dimitry Vassiliev, and Denis Yuskov; and seven persons belonging to athletes’ entourage (doctors, coaches, etc.): Pavel Abratkiewicz, Victor Sivkov, Anna Vychik, Evgeny Zykov, Anatoly Chelyshev, Danil Chaban, and Konstantin Poltavets.
According to the press-release, the decisions were taken “on the basis of the written submissions filed by the parties.” The panel, composed of Dr Mohamed Abdel-Raouf (Egypt), President, Prof. Laurence Boisson de Chazournes (Switzerland/France), arbitrator, and Mr Jinwon Park (Korea), arbitrator, determined that “the CAS ad hoc Division lacked jurisdiction to deal with any of the two applications.”
The complete texts of the decisions with the grounds will be published on the CAS website on 9 February 2018, the document reads. Earlier, the Ad hoc Division has initiated proceedings over urgent appeals filed by 32 Russian athletes.
On February 1, CAS fully upheld 28 and partially upheld 11 appeals filed by Russian athletes disqualified for life from participating in the Olympic games because of the doping suspicions.
CAS reviewed each of the cases on individual basis and did not find evidence against 28 athletes to be sufficient. At the same the court ruled that 11 athletes did violate anti-doping rule regulation but changed the punishment: instead of being banned for life the sportsmen were prohibited only from participating in the upcoming Olympic games in the Republic of Korea. Later, Thomas Bach stated that he was disappointed with the CAS decision and called for reformation of the court.
On February 5, an IOC commission refused to invite 13 athletes and 2 coaches from Russia, who had earlier been found not guilty of violating anti-doping rules.
