Athletics-Russia’s athletes keep sights on Rio despite doping ban (Reuters)
By Jack Stubbs and Dmitriy Rogovitskiy MOSCOW, March 1 (Reuters) – Barred from international competition, Russia is training its athletes at a series of special domestic tournaments and banking on hopes a doping ban will be lifted in time for this year’s Rio Olympics. While rivals will pit their strength at the world indoor games in the United States in March, Russian athletes have had to make do with a winter season supplemented with five additional Grand Prix events across a country where sporting success is seen as integral to national pride. “I didn’t participate in these scandals and don’t even understand it,” hurdler Konstantin Shabanov told Reuters at the Russian Athletics Championship in Moscow.