OlympicsFan

Of course her tests werent positive, otherwise she already wouldve been banned. For me her behaviour is very suspicious and i dont trust her. In general its much easier to get away with doping if you only compete (in top shape) at very few competitions. You can do the world cup without doping, so that you will never get caught, then you only have to dope for the big events, where you really can earn money.

Agreed, but lets be honest: There is no objective measurement for that, so FIVB can do everything they want with it. The same is true for the seriousness of the anti-doping rule violation, how do you determine the seriousness of an anti-doping rule violation? I think Russia only will get suspended if more players will get caught, which seems unlikely at this moment. I think the result of Russia getting suspended would be that France qualifies directly for Rio and then Germany would get the french spot at the world qualification tournament.

Congrats to Austria, Landertinger and Eder clearly deserved to win a medal, although it was a pretty surprising result. Norway also needs a gold medal on the mens side, i hope that they will win gold in the relay.

The Netherlands had a huge chance, but just threw it away ... Olympics without Japan and the Netherlands will be pretty boring. The swedish team is really boring, the dutch team at least showed some improvements in the last couple of years and they couldve surprised in Rio. I guess France is the only team that could stop USA from winning gold in Rio, but they always mess up in big games, so i am not very optimistic.

She should be happy that she always got away until now. In 2010 she won gold in Vancour in womens sprint and silver in the pursuit. In all other sprints of the season she never finished on podium and only finished 3rd in one mass start and 3rd in one 15 km race. In 2014 she won again gold in Sochi in womens sprint, her results in 4 sprints before the olympic games were 35th, 13th and 2 x 16th. Noone can trust athletes who suddenly show huge improvements at big events.

There are really people who believe that Bauge/Tamgho were clean? I guess one has to be french to understand that ... Even those two are not stupid enough to test positive in training. Why should someone who is doped show up, just to get suspended for 2/4 years, if he could reduce his ban to 1 year by just not showing up? Moulinet was 11th in world ranking when he got caught (only 10s behind 6th place in world ranking), for me thats world class. Bigot was 8th in world ranking when he got caught, for me thats world class. Livio was 5th at 2014 world championships in individual, for me thats world class. I know that you would never admit that France has a problem, but at least try to check your facts before you try to argue with me.

Very sad that Schempp is completely out of shape, he was the only one who couldve stopped Fourcade in top shape. Shipulin also is completely out of shape. Overall very strange results here, the french athletes seem to have "trained" very good. They probably asked their swimmers how to do it.

Seriousness of the anti-doping rule violation: Meldonium was legal until the end of 2015, so the violation wasnt very serious. Whether the athlete tested negative in other games of the same event: Hasnt been announced yet, but he tested positive two times in the same event. Extent to which the team's result has been affected by the anti-doping rule violation: I think Markin only played in 1 set against Germany, but i dont know how much influence he had and if he played against France. I would say its difficult to tell how good Russia wouldve played without him, but he wasnt among the most important russian players. I think all of this wouldnt be a reason to suspend Russia, but they have to test all russian players for Meldonium and if more russian players will get caught, then they have to suspend Russia. I think if more russian players wouldve been caught, then they already wouldve announced it, so Russia should be pretty safe. Either Markin was the only player who took Meldonium or they didnt test the other players who were doped. The question is: Shouldnt it be normal to test all players after each match? If you only test few players, then you are very unlikely to fulfill your own criteria for suspending a whole team, but maybe some federations dont want to suspend (certain) whole teams.

The disgusting results wont stop ... I hope that Fourcade will be stopped soon, his dominance is just ridiculous. The only positive thing is that France will probably loose most of their gold medals next year, like they did in fencing or track cycling. Edit: Very sad news that Kuzmina will come back, why cant she just end her career?

Sadly we will have to compete without Janas, she is injured again and will probably miss Rio. At this point i think that she should just end her career ... I actually predicted that this would happen when i first took notice of her (in 2013). Thats just what always happens when Germany has a talent like her. She is the biggest talent Germany ever had in artistic gymnastics (on the womens side), but obviously its not supposed to be that we are good in womens artistic gymnastics ... Even without Janas we should clearly be good enough to qualify. I hope that we will compete with Berger, Scheder, Schäfer, Seitz and Alt. We will miss Janas especially at floor and balance beam, but our strength at uneven bars should give us a big advantage.

Go Netherlands!

I am shocked that you didnt qualify, what happened? Did your team play bad football, did you have any injuries or bad referee decisions? I predicted Japan to win a medal in Rio, but now your elimination will improve our chances for a medal. I think your team will come back strong at the next world championships, this is for sure not the end of glory for your womens football team.

I would really like to see german volleyball in Rio, especially because this would be the last big tournament for many of our players (Grozer for example) and for our coach (he will quit his job later this year), but its very unlikely that IOC will suspend such a big team and in addition to that we had our chance to qualify in a fair competition and we werent able to do it, so it wouldnt feel right to see the german team in Rio. I think there is noone who really thinks that Russia won because of Markin, they also wouldve won without him. Edit: I have to say that i am pretty sad about all of this, because our women also were extremely "unlucky" to not qualify. If i would be able to give a ticket to Rio to one of our volleyball teams, then i would definitely give it to our womens team.

Possible? Yes Realistic? No I think our only chance would be if a second russian player will get caught. Suspending Russia would create tons of problems: Would Bulgaria be allowed to "replay" the semifinal against Germany? Would Germany be allowed to "replay" the final against France or would France qualify directly? This all would be too complicated, so they will probably change nothing, unless a 2nd player gets caught, then they will be forced to act.

We are among the 8 best teams in the world, so you could say that we deserve to be in Rio, but everything was on our side (home advantage, we were leading against Poland) and we still managed to finish 4th, so this team obviously didnt have the nerves to do it and therefore doesnt deserve Rio in my opinion. I think the rule is as like that: 1 doping case: IOC has to decide if they want to suspend the team 2 doping cases: The team has to be suspended

Really? It became illegal at the start of 2016 and the qualification tournament was in January ...

Alexander Markin, russian volleyball player (Meldonium)

Alexander Markin was tested positive for Meldonium after the match against Germany at the european qualification tournament, this might mean that Russia wont be allowed to play in Rio, so Germany might get a second chance to qualify and France could qualify directly. I hope that it wont happen, Russia didnt win because of one doped player and they deserve to be in Rio. We threw away the Olympics in the match against Poland, so we dont really deserve to be in Rio in my opinion. If they find a second russian player who was doped, then Russia will definitely be suspended.

Of course you always knew it, thats easy to say when noone can check it. I have always sayed that he is dirty and again i was right, i am just surprised that he was stupid enough to get caught so quick. I still remember you cheering for him to become the first man to break 34s, but maybe it was all just a dream ...

I dont really understand your point ... Do you think that all russian athletes are doped? Otherwise there will always be some athletes who didnt dope and will be banned, because other russian athletes doped. Sharapova lives in the US for a couple of years now, so you probably cant really say that she is part of the russian system. I dont think that this has any importance for the IAAF and i still dont believe that the IAAF really thinks about banning Russia. Russian athletes and coaches are still competing as if nothing happened, the recent documentary by Hajo Seppelt shows that nothing really changed. To be honest i dont think that its even possible to completey change the russian sport system in only about a year, so IAAF either has to ban Russia or they just have to pretend that Russia really solved all the problems.

Its funny that he has been caught again. I always knew that he was still dirty, but a certain person in this forum (i dont have to name him) still cheered for him, saying that he is so fast because he has a superior technique. I said more than a year ago that he should stop doping, because he will otherwise get completely bald before turning 25 and now he wont have any other choice. I hope that some german athletes will also get caught, but i doubt that they were "stupid" enough to take this drug.

I guess Sharapova will miss the olympic games ... I dont think that it was just a stupid mistake, but i am still sad that she wont be able to fulfill her dream of winning an olympic gold medal. On the other hand i am glad that she wont retire, she is the biggest star in womens tennis behind Serena. I wonder if this was the reason why she didnt play in FedCup? Will she now loose all her points from the Australian Open? Its funny that many people applaud her for announcing it herself, i think it wouldve been worse for her if ITF wouldve announced it. I am just surprised that ITF allowed her to do it. Tons of russian/ukrainian athletes and Aregawi have been caught already, i think many more might follow. Why didnt anyone of her staff notice that Meldonium will become illegal? Maybe they didnt even know that she was taking it ...

It would be cool if the Netherlands could qualify. They will probably qualify all teams on the womens side except womens rugby/basketball and maybe womens football.

I dont think that those results were really surprising from a german perspective. Our only realistic chance to qualify a team was probably mens foil and there we got surprised by the fast improving british team. I dont see us qualifying a team for Tokyo either, except mens sabre. We have some promising talents in womens foil, mens sabre, mens foil, mens epee and womens epee, but we are clearly missing the depth we had about 10 years ago and this wont change for at least one decade.

German athletics federation has lowered almost all standards to those that the IAAF announced, except for very few events (Marathon, Race Walking). The official reason is that this is a result of the recent doping scandals ... I think we will now see a huge german team in athletics (which i dont like), probably because we have to make up for the athletes we "lost" in volleyball/fencing. Some young german athletes showed big improvements in the last couple of weeks, i hope some of them will qualify for Rio: 60 m women: Pinto 7.07 (1992), Butzek (1997) 7.27, Kwadwo (1999) 7.36 800 m women: Hering 2.00.93 (1994), Klosterhalfen (1997) 2.03.37 1500 m women: Klosterhalfen (1997) 4.08.38, Krause (1992) 4.08.91 3000 m women: Krause (1992) 8.49.43, Klosterhalfen (1997) 8.56.36, Reh (1997) 9.00.58 Womens long jump: Wester (1994) 6.95 Mens triple jump: Heß (1996) 17.00 Especially Klosterhalfen, Heß, Roleder, Wester and Krause have looked really promising this year so far, i think some of them might really surprise a lot of people in Rio.