Rio 2016: Russia, depleted, launches a medals stash

R I O - The Russophobic Incomplete Olympics, after the international sports authorities picked and chose which Russian athletes could compete at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, giving non-Russians a better chance of getting a medal in the modalities from which (clean) Russians were excluded.

Non-Russians can be found guilty of doping and compete at the Olympic Games while Russian athletes who have never taken any illegal substances are banned arbitrarily under a blanket ban excluding them from competing. This renders the medals won by athletes competing in modalities from which the Russians were excluded meaningless and those who win in these competitions will know that they were achieved in R I O - the Russophobic Incomplete Olympics.

Nevertheless, growing is the medals stash won by the remnants of Russia's Olympic team - those who were not arbitrarily excluded, in many cases without any justification whatsoever because they had never taken any illegal substance while of course western athletes who have had issues with doping can compete freely And the first to bring home a medal was the Under-60 kilogram Judo champion, Beslan Mudranov.

Joining him with a gold medal is Yana Egorian, Women's fencing individual sabre. The fencing team also got a silver (Sofya Velikaya) and a bronze (Safin Timur). There were more silvers in Swimming, Women's 100 metres breaststroke (Yuliya Efimova), the Women's Archery team (Tuiana Dashidorzhieva, Ksenia Perova, Inna Stepanova); the Women's  10 metres Air Pistol, Shooting, Vitalina Batsarashkina; and the Men's Team in Artistic Gymnastics (Ivan Stretovich, Nikita Nagorniy, Denis Abliazin, David Belyavskiy, Nikolai Kuksenkov).

The other bronze medals came in the Shooting (Men's 10 metre air rifle, Vladimir Maslennikov) and Judo, Women's Under 52 Kg., Natalia Kuziutina.

Despite the attempts to deplete the Russian Olympic team, there are now two golds, five silvers and three bronze medals ready to bring back to Moscow.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru 

Twitter: @TimothyBHinchey

One further question: Why is Kosovo competing as an independent federation and why aren't its athletes competing for the Republic of Serbia, of which Kosovo is a part?

 


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