Six Russian athletes — para-cyclists Alexey Obydennov, Svetlana Moshkovich and Natalia Yanuto, track-and-field athlete Alexey Ashapatov, Paralympic swimmer Olesya Vladykina and Margarita Goncharova, competing mainly in category T38 sprint events, decided to send letters to the IPC requesting it to consider allowing them to participate in the games.
"I would be very grateful if you review my individual request for entry to the Paralympic Games in such exceptional circumstances or, alternatively, describe me conditions upon which my participation in Rio Games would be possible," each letter said.
The athletes, who say they have been repeatedly tested outside Russia and found to be clean, asked for the IPC to provide criteria which could allow some Russians to compete if they can show they are clean. The approach is similar to the criteria that allowed US-based Russian long jumper Darya Klishina to compete at the Rio Olympics when the rest of the Russian team was banned.
"I strongly believe that real perpetrators of the dirty system must be punished and banned from sport. I do not want to lose to cheaters and I don't want to compete with cheaters, even Russians," each athlete said in a letter. "However even more strongly I believe that innocent people should not suffer for actions of cheaters that tried to deceive clean athletes of the world."
A doping scandal, simmering since 2014, escalated in July when an independent World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) commission presented a report accusing Russia of running a state-wide doping program and calling for a blanket ban on the entire Russian team.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Moscow would organize special competitions for Paralympians disqualified from the upcoming Rio summer games.
