Sport

Russia excluded from 2018 winter Paralympics

08:37 am on 30 August 2016

Russia, already suspended from next month's Rio Paralympics, have also been banned for the winter edition in South Korea in 2018 because of a state-sponsored sports doping programme.

Russia athletics Photo: PHOTOSPORT

The Russian Paralympic Committee says the International Paralympic Committee decision regarding Russian Paralympians being excluded from the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, has also been extended to include the Winter Games in 2018.

The IPC went further than the International Olympic Committee which stopped short of a blanket ban on Russia at this month's Rio Olympics and left the decision instead in the hands of international sports federations.

Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin called the Paralympic ban cynical and immoral but also said Moscow acknowledged mistakes it had made in tackling sports doping.

Putin said the decision to bar Russian athletes, including those who had not tested positive for any banned substances, was a vivid manifestation "of how the humanistic foundations of sport and Olympism are shamelessly flouted by politics".

"The decision to disqualify our Paralympic team is outside the law, outside morality and outside humanity," he added.

"It is simply cynical to vent one's anger on those for whom sport has become the meaning of their life ... I even feel pity for those taking such decisions because they must well understand that it is so demeaning for them."

The whole dispute centres on a World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) report 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 and Paralympic events.

Although not widely followed or celebrated in Russia, where rights campaigners say many disabled people are marginalised by regressive social attitudes and inadequate state support, the country's para-athletes are some of the best in the world.

Their team topped the medal table at the 2014 Winter Paralympics in the Russian city of Sochi after taking second place behind China at London 2012.

-Reuters