Exclusive: Court of Arbitration for Sport rejects Russian rowing appeal to be allowed to compete at Rio 2016

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has thrown out the appeal filed by 17 Russian rowers against their exclusion from the Olympic Games

In what will come as a major fillip after a long, difficult and divisive day, CAS announced that its ad hoc Division, meeting here, had dismissed an application filed by the 17 yesterday.

It remains to be seen if this decision will be reflected in rulings still pending in other sports.

However, World Rowing had previously stated that the athletes had been excluded simply for failing to meet guidelines and "are not at all considered to have participated in doping".

This would seem to suggest that CAS will not insist on evidence of a failed test in order to uphold appealed bans on other Russian athletes from participating in the Olympics.

Russia is understood to have set a deadline of Thursday (August 4) for the finalisation of selection of its Olympic team in all sports.

The 17 – Daniil Andrienko, Aleksander Bogdashin, Alexandra Fedorova, Anastasiia Ianina, Alexander Kornilov, Aleksandr Kulesh, Dmitry Kuznetsov, Elena Lebedeva, Elena Oriabinskaia, Julia Popova, Ekaterina Potapova, Alevtina Savkina, Alena Shatagina, Maksim Telitcyn, Anastasiia Tikhanova, Aleksei Vikulin and Semen Yaganov - were excluded after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) asked International Federations to “carry out an individual analysis of each athlete’s anti-doping record, taking into account only reliable adequate international tests, and the specificities of the athlete’s sport and its rules”.

Rio 2016 looks set to take place without the majority of Russian rowers after they lost an appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport to overturn the decision to stop them taking part ©Getty Images

Those concerned are understood not to have satisfied the criteria for being tested outside Russia.

World Rowing has ruled only six competitors from Russia eligible for Rio 2016.

Greece are set to take the spot of the men's four, while the place of the men's eight has been given to Italy, who have also been handed Russia's berth in the women's lightweight double.

Australia have been offered the slot in the women's eight.

World Rowing's lawyers work is not finished yet, however.

Two more appeals have been lodged by the Russian Rowing Federation on the cases of a rower considered ineligible by the IOC for implication in the McLaren Report and also for the two competitors considered ineligible by the IOC for previous anti-doping code violations.

The hearings are due to take place here tomorrow at 11am.