Viktor Lebedev is a four-time world medalist and two-time world champion (Photo/Tony Rotundo, WrestlersAreWarriors.com)United World Wrestling, the governing body for Olympic forms of wrestling, has recommended that 16 of the 17 Russian wrestlers who qualified for the 2016 Olympics should be allowed to take to the mats in Rio, based on results of UWW's Special Commission released Thursday.
The one wrestler who was not recommended -- Viktor Lebedev -- should not be allowed to compete at the Rio Olympics because he failed a drug test in 2006. Lebedev's qualification spot in men's freestyle at 57 kilograms/125 pounds has been replaced by the nation of the next best-ranked wrestler from his qualification tournament, the 2015 World Championships. That nation is Belarus (BLR).
The Russian wrestlers who passed the tests include Greco-Roman wrestlers Stepan Maryanyan, Islam-Beka Albiev, Roman Vlasov, Davit Chakvetadze, Islam Magomedov, and Sergey Semenov… men's freestyle wrestlers Soslan Ramonov, Aniuar Geduev, Abdulrashid Sadulaev, Anzor Boltukaev, and Bilyal Makhov… and women's freestyle wrestlers Milana Dadasheva, Valeriia Koboblova, Inna Trazhukova, Natalia Vorobeva, and Ekaterina Bukina.
In its statement, the UWW Special Commission pointed out that all Russian wrestlers currently qualified for Rio have all been tested this year by independent laboratories accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) located outside of Moscow. None of these wrestlers entered in the Olympic Games had been listed in the McLaren Report, an independent report issued in mid-July that confirmed claims of state-backed Russian cheating at the 2014 Winter Olympics held in Sochi, Russia, as well as at various other sporting events.
The UWW Special Commission also recommended that the International Olympic Commission test the entire Russian wrestling team in Rio before the start of the Olympic Wrestling competition. The commission added that "any change be made to the entry list previously submitted by the Russian team, both the replaced and new entry must be tested; if either test is positive, the qualified spot is lost."
The commission has sent its recommendations to the IOC and Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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