LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Two Russian track and field athletes have failed in a bid to have their ban from the Olympics put on hold.
Two-time Olympic pole vault gold medalist Yelena Isinbayeva and world 110-meter hurdles champion Sergei Shubenkov had applied to the Swiss Federal Court to delay application of an earlier Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling which upheld the Russian team's ban from the Olympic track meet. Had they won, it could have allowed them to compete at the Rio de Janeiro Games.
However, the Swiss court ruled that the two Russians had waited too long after the CAS ruling to file their request and that they had failed to demonstrate that they met the International Olympic Committee's criteria to compete in Rio.
Shubenkov said he and Isinbayeva would fight on in court.
"It doesn't in any way stop us from further actions," Shubenkov, who is a lawyer by training, told Russia's state Tass news agency. "We'll keep going according to the plan we had. This is just the first step."
However, the head of the Russian track federation told local media that it was unlikely any appeals would be in time for Russian athletes to take part in Olympic track and field, which starts Friday and runs through Aug. 21.
Russia was banned from international track and field, including the Olympics, in November over widespread doping. That followed the publication of a World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned report alleging a culture of performance-enhancing drug use and cover-ups in the Russian track team.
Russia sees politics behind Paralympics ban
Russia blamed politics for a decision to bar its Paralympians from next month's Rio Games because of a state-sponsored doping program, saying Monday it would take legal measures to try to overturn the ban.
The decision to exclude Russia's entire Paralympics team, announced Sunday by the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), means at least 250 Russian competitors are set to miss the Sept. 7-18 Paralympics.
The same scandal has led to 109 out of 387 athletes originally included in the Russian team for the Rio Olympics being banned, including its entire track and field squad.
The imbroglio centers on a report for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) that found the Russian government and the FSB security service had over years covered up hundreds of doping cases across the majority of Olympic sports, as well as Paralympic events.
The findings have rocked Russian sport and tarnished the legacy of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, which were President Vladimir Putin's showcase.
On Monday, Vladimir Lukin, president of the Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC), said that to bar his country's Paralympians from Rio would be a grave human rights violation.
"The overwhelming majority of sportspeople who were barred from taking part in the Games were absolutely clean sportspeople," he told a Moscow news conference. "What comes first, the crime or the punishment?"
He told Russian news agencies the decision had a whiff of second-grade politics about it and questioned why the IPC, which he said had previously lavished praise on Russia's Paralympians, had changed its mind so suddenly.
His words were echoed by sports officials in Rio who said a blanket ban was inappropriate and risked punishing clean athletes.
"We are deeply concerned by the IPC's decision," said ANOC President Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah. "The IPC has decided to suspend Russia ... favoring collective responsibility over individual justice."
But WADA and other anti-doping authorities said the ban was justified in response to a state-backed doping scheme.
