Russia's reputation suffered another blow when the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) announced Sunday it was suspending the country over evidence of state involvement in a doping cover-up scheme published in a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report last month.
Both the Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko and Vladimir Lukin, the president of Russia's Paralympic Committee, have pledged to challenge the decision in court.
Lukin said Monday that the committee would decide by the end of the day where to file their appeal, one of its options being the Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
‘I think that no other national Paralympic committee has as carefully and actively worked on its anti-doping programme than we have,’ Lukin told reporters at a press conference in Moscow.
‘We have fulfilled at 120 percent everything that was legally required of us by the technical (international) authorities and we are ready to prove it.’
The IPC said its decision was unanimous and there were immediate statements of support from member bodies, including the British Paralympic Association.
Lukin said that the committee had in the past worked constructively with the IPC and never faced any criticism from its president Philip Craven, who said Sunday that Russia's ‘thirst for glory at all costs has severely damaged the integrity and image of all sport’.
‘Their medals over morals attitude disgusts me,’ Craven said.
Lukin said Monday that the Russian Paralympic Committee had never been criticised for any shortcomings, including on the anti-doping front, and claimed that the ban stemmed from ‘something not in sports’.
Lukin, who is a member of a commission created by Moscow last month to clean up sport, said he ‘really wants’ to investigate the allegations against the country.
In an attempt to portray the Russian Paralympic Committee as being independent from the government, Lukin said that ‘state structures’ have never imposed decisions on the committee and that it had received ‘very little’ state support prior to 2006.
Mutko, who has been barred from Rio over last month's WADA report, said Sunday that the ban against the country's Paralympians was ‘beyond belief’.
Russia narrowly escaped a blanket ban from Rio last month when the IOC left it up to international sports federations to determine which Russians are eligible to compete while granting itself a final say on the Russian Olympic roster.
