Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev on Thursday (August 25) thanked National Olympic team members for their achievements in Rio and handed over keys to medalists for their new BMW cars.

The ceremony took place in Kremlin where the athletes were welcomed and awarded by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

One hundred medallists got the cars.

Russia's Olympic team finished this month's Games in Rio in fourth place according to the total number of gold medals it won.

"No matter how some were trying they didn't succeed in disrupting the Olympics for Russia. You have proved to the entire world that the victories of our sport have nothing to do neither with doping nor with other sins some occasionally try to label us with. You achieved very convincing results in honest and beautiful fight."

Russia has been at the centre of a doping scandal over the past year. The country's entire track and field athletics team was banned from taking part in the Rio Games after the publication of the McLaren report in July.

The report revealed evidence of a systematic and widespread state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) later ruled on to reject a legal challenge by a group of 68 Russian athletes against a ban on them competing in the Rio.

The IOC decided not to impose a total ban on Russian competitors despite the country's doping history. However, they asked sports federations to stop those athletes from competing in Rio who were implicated in the recent McLaren report into doping, or ones who had been previously sanctioned.

Two hundred eighty-five of 387 athletes were allowed to compete in Rio Games.