From Inside the Games

Detailed verdicts explaining why the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) overturned sanctions against 28 Russian athletes banned by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on February 1 are not expected to be published for at least another week.

It is already six weeks since CAS first announced its decisions and there had originally been concern in sporting circles that it would take as long as until the end of February until full decisions could be published.

A fresh deadline of this week had been targeted after the end of February passed.

No official update has been given by CAS, but insidethegames understands the timetable has been pushed back further to the end of next week.

The Lausanne-based body overturned sanctions against 28 out of 39 Russian athletes who had been banned from the Olympic Games for life, with their results from Sochi 2014 being reinstated.

In a statement, CAS stated that in the 28 cases, “the evidence collected was found to be insufficient to establish that an anti-doping rule violation (ADRV) was committed by the athletes concerned”.

The bans remained in place for the other 11 athletes, although it was ruled that a lifetime Olympic suspension was unenforceable and the group were consequently prevented only from competing in Pyeongchang.

The IOC reacted furiously to the verdicts and claimed there was an “urgent need” to reform the CAS to ensure more consistency in their decisions.

CAS President John Coates, an IOC member and close ally of the organisation’s leader, Thomas Bach, said that it would be hard to arrive at detailed conclusions until full explanations were given for their decisions.

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