(ATR) The International Olympic Committee is one step closer to revealing which Russian athletes will be allowed to compete under a neutral OAR flag at the PyeongChang Winter Games next month.
An IOC statement says no names will be released until January 27 but did reveal that so far the original pre-registration pool of 500 athletes has been reduced by 111 by the Independent Invitation Review Panel. More than 80 percent of the athletes in the remaining pool did not compete at Sochi 2014. None of the athletes sanctioned by the Oswald Commission for doping in Sochi is still in the pool.
The pool will likely be shrinking in the coming days. The remaining pool of athletes must still pass pre-conditions such as further pre-Games tests and re-analysis from stored samples. Only if these requirements are met can the athletes be considered for invitation.
Once the pool of athletes is finalized, it will be up to the suspended Russian Olympic Committee, with which a working relationship was established for the implementation of the IOC sanctions, to propose which clean athletes can fill the earned quota places by sport, discipline and event. Therefore, says the IOC, only a limited number of athletes can be chosen from the current pool.
"It was not easy to put this list together, but we wanted to be absolutely sure that only clean athletes from Russia can be invited to participate in the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018," said the Invitation Review Panel chair Valérie Fourneyron in a statement.
"We have been carefully looking into all the evidence provided by the McLaren and the Schmid Reports, by the Disciplinary Commission of Denis Oswald, information provided by various departments of the World Anti-Doping Agency and intelligence provided by Olympic Winter Sports Federations and the Pre-Games Testing Taskforce. In addition, the Panel decided to add further pre-Games testing requirements.
The IOC says that because the qualification process is still ongoing and more preconditions have to be met by some of the athletes, it is still not possible to project how many athletes will participate in PyeongChang in the OAR group.
The invitations can be issued only at the OAR Delegation Registration Meeting (DRM) on January 27 in PyeongChang. Therefore, a final list of invited athletes cannot be published before that date.
The Invitation Review Panel and the OARIG also looked at the list of Russian coaches and officials, limiting its decisions to coaches and medical doctors associated with athletes who have been sanctioned by the Oswald Commission. The Panel recommended that 51 coaches and 10 medical staff cannot be offered an invitation to the PyeongChang Games. The OARIG confirmed this decision.
The IOC says a delegation, led by IOC Deputy Director General Pere Miró and Sports Director Kit McConnell, will go to Moscow at the beginning of next week to coordinate the implementation of the decisions of the IOC Executive Board. This will include coordination of other practical and operational questions related to the participation of individual Russian athletes.
Written by Gerard Farek
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