The Russian Olympic Committee today met to discuss a number of matters, but most importantly to endorse the team selections in all sports. Andrei Rodionenko will announce the names formally tomorrow, but in the meantime, we already have the official list and more.
It pretty much confirms what we already know - in Russian alphabetical order according to the list - Ablyazin, Belyavski, Ignatyev, Kuksenkov, Melnikova, Mustafina, Nagorny, Paseka, Spiridonova, Tutkhalyan. Reserves - Afanasyeva, Kapitonova, Polyashov, Stretovich.You can access the full list for all sports here - http://olympteka.ru/olymp/rio2016/news/1367.html - with many thanks to our anonymous contributor.
Tomorrow the Court of Arbitration in Sport will issue its findings about the legality of the banning of Russia's entire Track and Field athletics team from the Rio Olympics. The IOC will take the CAS findings into account when making a decision about how they will act on the revelations in the McLaren report. If CAS supports a ban of the whole athletics team without individual exceptions, then the IOC might take this as an endorsement of its proposed blanket ban of all Russian sport.
The legalities of agreeing a blanket ban are difficult, as this would essentially involve a subversion of the usual fundamental principle - innocent until proved guilty.
The ROC has categorically ruled out the idea of any boycott of the Olympic Games. President Alexander Zhukov says this is because a boycott may well precipitate the death of the Olympic movement.
There are two options besides the total ban that are being discussed in the press - (1) Individuals are offered exemptions on the basis of their clean doping records (2) sports are offered exemptions on the basis of their clean records, with the individual sports governing body making the call. Either of these would be good for gymnastics, but we will have to wait until Sunday to find out. Which is the day that the Russian team fly out to Rio.
Denis, David, Nikita, Nikolai, Angelina, Aliya, Nikita, Maria, Daria, Seda, Ksenia, Natalia, Vladislav, Ivan - you are all great Olympians. We will be with you every step of the way! Good luck with your preparations! Keep training well and the results will come. Davai!