RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Message to Russia from race walking's new Olympic champion: You'd be welcomed back, but dope-free.
After victory in the longest athletics event at the Rio Games, the men's 50-kilometer race walk, Matej Toth of Slovakia said Russia deserved the ban that kept all its track and field athletes, bar a long jumper who failed to medal, out of the Olympics because of systematic, state-sanctioned doping.
But Slovakia's first ever medalist of any color in athletics also said he hopes Russia will earn its way back into the sport's graces "very soon." Russia's walkers could be "very good" without doping, Toth said, "The only question is when they will be able to realize it — that we can do it without doping.