A Swiss court has denied a bid to delay a doping ban on Russia's biggest track star, Yelena Isinbayeva, but she announced she is going to Rio anyway to seek election to the International Olympic Committee.
The Swiss Federal Count on August 8 denied a bid by Isinbayeva and world 110-meter hurdles champion Sergei Shubenkov to delay an earlier Court of Arbitration for Sport ruling which upheld the Russian track-and-field team's ban from the Olympics. Had they won, they might have been able to compete in Rio.
"The last hope to compete at the Olympic Games has vanished," Isinbayeva, a pole vaulter who has never personally been implicated in Russia's doping scandal, wrote on Instagram.
"I will be unable to go to the Olympics as an incumbent athlete, but I have every right to do that as a candidate to the IOC Athletes' Commission. I am flying to Rio on August 14," she said.
If Isinbayeva fails to be elected by other Olympic athletes for the post, Russia would lose one of its three IOC spots, since the term of Russia's current athletes' representative, Alexander Popov, ends in Rio.
