Russian tennis team get green light to compete at Rio Olympics
Russia's tennis team will be allowed to compete at the Rio Olympics this summer after the International Tennis Federation (ITF) backed the decision not to impose a blanket ban on the country's competitors.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Sunday that Russia would not be thrown out of the Games for running a state-directed doping programme, with international federations for individual sports instructed to rule on Russian athletes for themselves.
The ITF was quick to do so and announced that the Russian team will be welcome to compete in Brazil.
A statement read: "The ITF welcomes the decision of the IOC to permit clean athletes to compete in Rio 2016 and to let each International Federation determine the eligibility of its respective Russian athletes.
"The seven Russian tennis players who have been nominated to compete in Rio have been subject to a rigorous anti-doping testing programme outside Russia, which included a total of 205 samples collected since 2014.
"The ITF believes that this is sufficient for the seven Russian tennis players to meet the relevant requirement of today's decision of the IOC Executive Board.
"The ITF will also be seeking confirmation from WADA that none of those players, or the Russian Tennis Federation, were implicated in the McLaren report, in accordance with the IOC decision."
The Russian team was in fact increased to eight in an updated list published by the ITF on Tuesday, with Teymuraz Gabashvili added to the men's singles competition to join Andrey Kuznetsov and Evgeny Donskoy.
Svetlana Kuznetsova, Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Darya Kasatkina and Ekaterina Makarova will compete in women's singles - Makarova added to the team due to Maria Sharapova's drug ban - while Elena Vesnina will partner Makarova in the doubles.
