The International Wrestling Federation (UWW) is one of the bodies in the Olympic movement that is open to the return of Russian athletes to competition, but it will not have to work hard to select the wrestlers eligible for neutral status. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced on Thursday that it had nabbed a whole contingent of Russian wrestlers, both male and female, who were found guilty of doping and were suspended for two years. In total, no less than nine wrestlers, including one man, have been banned from all competitions for violating anti-doping rules. The ITA explained in a press release that the nine cases of doping in Russian wrestling were detected thanks to the investigations carried out by WADA’s Intelligence and Investigations department and by Professor Richard McLaren’s team, but also thanks to the data from the Moscow anti-doping laboratory, which WADA recovered with some difficulty after an interminable tug of war with the Russian authorities.
