By Mitch Phillips RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Italy were awarded Russia's place in the Olympic men's cycling team pursuit competition on Friday after the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) rejected the appeal by three Russian riders who were ruled ineligible by the sport's governing body. Dmitry Sokolov, Dmitry Strakhov and Kiril Sveshnikov were ruled out by the UCI after being named in the McLaren report that exposed extensive state-sponsored doping and cover-ups of positive tests in Russia. More...