Rio de Janeiro - A Russian heavyweight shattered the dreams of a home hope at the Rio Olympics on Monday and then hit out at the doping "politics" which he says hampered his preparations.
Evgeny Tishchenko and the rest of the Russian boxing team only found out on the eve of Friday's opening ceremony that he would be allowed at the Games after the scandal over state-run Russian doping across sports including boxing.
Tishchenko, 25, comfortably defeated Brazilian Juan Nogueira on unanimous points -- the result was met with loud boos from the mostly Brazilian crowd -- but said afterwards he had not been at his best because of the uncertainty over his participation.
"It did affect my preparations and influence how ready I was for this fight a little bit," he said.
"I only knew that I would be able to fight on Thursday. It's a pity that politics has influenced our sport as boxers from Russia have never been involved in doping."
All 11 members of the Russian boxing team were cleared to compete in Rio.
According to an investigation by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency that triggered the latest doping scandal involving Russia, boxing was among the sports that saw at least a handful of positive doping test results "disappear" in the state-orchestrated subterfuge.
