RIO DE JANEIRO — World champion Yulia Efimova led five Russian swimmers who won Olympic reprieves Friday taking their doping-tainted country to at least 276 competitors at the Rio Games.
And with the opening ceremony going on there was a chance that more could still join the squad as a Russian wrestler and a sailor still had appeals pending at the world sport tribunal.
The Russian delegation, battling allegations of state-backed doping, got only lukewarm applause when it entered the Maracana stadium.
But the Russian Olympic Committee has been celebrating every extra athlete added to the Rio contest by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in recent days.
“I’m going to the Olympics,” Efimova, the 24-year-old breaststroke world champion and 2012 Olympic bronze medalist, said on Instagram.
“I couldn’t be more proud and relieved.”
Efimova was provisionally suspended by swimming governing body FINA in March after a positive test for meldonium, the endurance-boosting drug banned from January.
She faced a lifetime ban as a two-time offender. But FINA lifted the suspension in May after the World Anti-Doping Agency said athletes testing positive for meldonium early this year could have taken it before it was banned.
FINA excluded Efimova again by putting her among seven Russian swimmers banned from the Olympics after an investigation by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren for WADA found widespread state-backed doping in Russia.
All the Russian swimmers have been reprieved following appeals to CAS, the head of the Russian delegation, Igor Kazikov, told Tass news agency.
The court ruled Thursday that the International Olympic Committee could not automatically exclude Russian athletes caught doping in the past but who had served their punishments.
The CAS decision could force other federations, who were asked by the IOC to recommend which Russians could compete, to reconsider their lists.
Wrestler Viktor Lebedev and sailor Pavel Sozykin were waiting to hear the result of appeals to CAS against their exclusion from Rio.
But with about 110 athletes cut from the Russian entry of 389, the squad in Rio will be Russia’s smallest at an Olympics in the past century.
There were 436 Russians at the London 2012 Games when they won 82 medals, including 24 golds. Some have already been taken away because of doping offenses however.
Sixty-seven out of 68 track and field contenders have been eliminated along with 22 rowers and eight weightlifters, six cyclists, four canoeists and other individuals.
McLaren has insisted he has evidence “beyond reasonable doubt” of Russian state involvement in the doping. WADA had called for a complete ban on Russia from the Rio Games.
But Russian Olympic Committee President Alexander Zhukov has protested that his country has “faced” discrimination in the handling of the sanctions.
IOC President Thomas Bach has criticized WADA’s handling of the crisis and said the anti-doping system needs a total overhaul.
But Bach has also faced criticism from countries who feel he was too soft on Russia. The toughest attacks have come from his native Germany, some officials called for him to resign.
