The Court of Arbitration for Sport has reinstated 28 Russian athletes who had been banned from Olympic competition creating anger at the IOC and among other competing nations. This has ramifications that go beyond the Olympics as athletes elsewhere see they can challenge doping rulings and win on the field and in the courts, increasing the likelihood of this happening even more.

The International Olympic Committee has reacted with dismay after 28 Russian athletes had their lifetime bans from the Olympics dramatically overturned by the court of arbitration for sport and warned that the ruling could have serious consequences for the fight against doping.
As Russia’s sports ministry celebrated the decision, saying that “justice had finally triumphed”, the IOC was bracing itself for a fresh legal challenge from some of the athletes who now want to compete in the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang which begin next Friday.
Cas’s ruling also means the 28 will have their results reinstated from the 2014 Winter Olympics, returning Russia to the top of the medal table. They include the skeleton medallists Alexander Tretyakov and Elena Nikitina, who have already indicated they want to compete in Pyeongchang.
British IOC member Adam Pengilly said he was “appalled and angry” at the decision, adding that it was “a desperate and dark day for sport, with cheats and thieves allowed to triumph. We need to take a long, hard look at sport’s leading administrators and sport’s legal system when we see the greatest fraud at an Olympic Games and years of institutional doping conspiracy pass by with only minor punishment,” he said. ...
The ROC remains suspended from Pyeongchang because of state-sponsored doping in Sochi. However, as things stand, around 160 Russians have been granted permission to compete as “neutral” athletes under the banner of Olympic Athlete from Russia after being cleared of doping by an IOC anti-doping panel. That figure could yet rise, although for now the IOC is insisting it will not automatically allow any of the Russians cleared by Cas late entry into the Games. “The result of the Cas decision does not mean that athletes from the group of 28 will be invited,” it said in a statement. “Not being sanctioned does not automatically confer the privilege of an invitation.”
The IOC was also unusually critical of Cas’s ruling, suggesting the court had not taken enough account of evidence of “the proven existence of the systematic manipulation of the anti-doping system” at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...port-athletics