The Rio Farce: Day -6: Add the Weightlifting Team To The Disqualified

Had to go to the same website that did the NBC bitch-fest story, Inside the Games, for this update:

Russia's weightlifting team has been disqualified from the Rio Games, being at least the second individual sport to refuse Russian athletes from the Rio Games, announced yesterday by the International Weightlifting Federation.

Some other eye-opening updates from Inside the Games:

• Chinese 20 km race walking champion Liu Hong was suspended in May for a failed drug test, but will now be allowed to compete in Rio.
• Hans William Gäb of Germany was given the Olympic Order in 2006 for his contributions with German Olympic teams.  He has renounced the award in protest of the IOC Executive Board decision to allow non-disqualified Russian athletes to compete in Rio.
• A second issue, a fire, has befallen the Australian Olympic Team after it tried to move into it's Olympic Village housing, three days after schedule.  
• It appears that athletes are already falling victim to the complete non-safety of Rio de Janeiro.  One example given is of a Chinese athlete robbed of his luggage by a party posing as a drunk person in the city.
• Nigeria's 4X400m women's track relay has been sent home because of a failed drugs test.
• In response to the Russian situation, the rugby sanctioning body, World Rugby, has announced that every player in the Olympic rugby tournament will be drug-tested, not just a random sample.

And that's just from Friday!  Here's a sample of some of the other articles they've got on the site, which anyone not watching the Games as a simple flag-waving penis-jocker should get bookmarked on the double!

• One of the athletes caught in the latest round of drug retests was a Belarussian hammer thrower who won the gold medal in Beijing in her event.
• Moon Dae-Sung is no longer a member of the International Olympic Committee after the Korean was discovered to have plagiarized part of his doctoral thesis.
• While Russian weightlifters have been disqualified, the sanctioning bodies of international wrestling, judo, fencing, triathlon, volleyball and cycling have green-lighted the Russian teams in their sports to compete in Rio.
• The seven sanctioning bodies covering all disciplines of Olympic winter sports will meet soon to discuss the WADA report as it relates to the 2018 Winter Games.
• Jamel Chatbi of Italy has been sent home after missing a third drug test.  Chatbi was scheduled to compete in the steeplechase.
• The 2012 Olympic champion in discus, Robert Harting, has accused IOC President Thomas Bach of being part of the doping problem, not in small portion because of Bach's ties to Vladimir Putin -- this is one of the reasons Gäb threw down his Olympic Order.
• The Court of Arbitration for Sport will open a Rio courtroom to directly hear appeals as quickly as feasible during the Rio Games.  On top of the Russian track disqualification, a recent finding tossing Kuwaiti shooters from the shooting events has also been recently heard from the CAS.
• In a non-surprising survey (and one which mirrors several readers of this blog), it is now confirmed that the doping scandals have reduced interest in the Olympic Games.  The BBC World Service surveyed 19,000 people from 19 countries, with nearly three in five stating their interest in the Games had been reduced because of the rampant doping scandals.
• K2 London gold medalist Alexander Dyachenko, former modern pentathlon world champion Ilia Frolov and modern pentathlete Maxim Kustov have all been tossed for their presence in the WADA report.  Three other Russians and Kustov's replacement (Frolov was an alternate) will compete.
• Two Indian athletes, a double-medaled wrestler (Sushil Kumar, who has won medals in the last two Olympics) and the current Asian shot-put champion (Inderjeet Singh) have both tested positive for drugs.  Kumar has already failed all appeals, Singh is in the process of appealing.

Gee, you think we got a problem here?

Thanks to Inside the Games, and I will definitely be keeping an eye on you guys over the next three weeks.