Despair and defiance as Russian athletes react to doping ban

Russia's national track and field championships were supposed to offer a chance to secure Olympic places, but with its athletes now banned from the Rio Games, excitement for competition has been replaced by despair and defiance.

For Natalya Antyukh, the reigning Olympic champion in the 400-meter hurdles, Rio would almost certainly be her last chance for a medal at the age of 34.

"The mood has been spoiled," Antyukh told The Associated Press on Sunday, adding that she had kept the Olympics as an "imaginary goal" for herself in the seven months that separated Russia's suspension in November from the IAAF vote Friday that upheld the Olympic ban.
 

"When you lose this imaginary goal, the motivation is lost. I am an experienced athlete and I was always giving myself a new goal and motivation. But what can I achieve now?"

The championships start on Monday in a stadium in the Volga River city of Cheboksary, with the likely small crowd a far cry from the pulsating atmosphere of the Olympics.

Pre-event training took place in sweltering heat on Sunday, with many athletes reluctant to venture out until late afternoon.

Some at the championships are angry at the International Association of Athletics Federations. Shot putter Yuri Kuzev even argued that Russia should have boycotted Olympic track and field events from the beginning rather than suffer the embarrassment of being banned.

"We should have rejected to go to the Olympics from the very beginning and not follow their orders," he said. That would have avoided a lengthy checklist of reform demands from the IAAF, ranging from extra testing for top athletes to investigating past doping offences and shutting down a notorious training center whose athletes produced more than 30 failed tests.

"They (IAAF) created a dictatorship. Saying 'do this, do that', and we simply followed," Kuzev said.