Olympics 2018: CAS fights flood of lawsuits: Russian athletes remain blocked

Breathing a sigh of relief at the IOC: A few hours before the opening ceremony of the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, the International Sports Court CAS dismissed the flood of complaints by Russian athletes. Thus the chaos is finished in time before the start of the competitions.

“We welcome this decision, which supports the fight against doping and brings clarity to all athletes,”said the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in an initial reaction.

It would have been fatal if athletes such as Legkow and others had been able to use CAS at the last minute to compete with CAS in order to challenge the deserved successes of many years of work for clean athletes,” said DOSB President Alfons Hörmann.

47 Russian athletes and coaches had fought to the end for their start and filed a lawsuit in the ad hoc court for not receiving an invitation to Pyeongchang from the IOC for doping violations and suspicions. CAS considered this to be justified in its reasoning. The IOC’s decision was in no way discriminatory or unfair, according to a communication.

The athletes concerned include the Sochi Olympic champion Alexander Legkov (cross-country skiing), Xenia Stolbowa (figure skating), Alexander Tretyakov (skeleton), Viktor Ahn (short track) and Anton Schipulin and Alexei Wolkow (biathlon).

Previously, 169 Russian athletes had received the green light to participate. They must compete in South Korea as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” under a neutral flag. Already on Thursday, CAS had rejected the complaint of 13 Russians.

The IOC had only verifiably invited clean Russian athletes to the games in South Korea and thus responded to investigations into the doping scandal at the Olympic Winter Games four years ago in Sochi, Russia.

The CAS initially caused confusion on the Russian question. Last week, the highest sports court lifted the lifelong Olympic barriers against 39 Russian athletes, giving the Russians hope for a start in Pyeongchang.

However, the IOC, in its decision of 5 October, had not yet reached a decision. On 12 December, all Russian athletes required a nomination and an invitation from the IOC to the Games. In 15 cases, the IOC had checked at the weekend whether it should issue invitations, but decided against it.

Before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, Russian athletes had succeeded in forcing CAS to participate at short notice. Some of the judgments were made when the competitions were already underway, and there was a great deal of chaos. At that time, the IOC had not decreed that an invitation to the Olympic Games was mandatory.