IOC reinstates Russia
Country continues to deny state involvement in systemic doping plot at 2014 Sochi Games
LONDON — The International Olympic Committee has lifted its suspension of Russia, restoring the country to full-member status after barring it from the 2018 Winter Games as part of its punishment for running a statebacked doping program that corrupted several global sporting events.
Russia’s flag and anthem were missing from the recent Olympics, though more than 160 of the nation’s athletes were able to participate as neutrals called “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” Two of them accounted for half of the failed drug tests at the Pyeongchang Games in South Korea.
Russia’s reinstatement followed a decision Sunday by the IOC’s executive board, led by Thomas Bach, its president, to bring Russia back into the fold on the condition that the remaining drug tests of its athletes from the Pyeongchang Games be confirmed as negative.
“We received a letter from the IOC, regarding the reinstatement of the ROC,” the Russian Olympic Committee’s president, Alexander Zhukov, told reporters in Moscow. Zhukov was among the officials barred from the 2018 Winter Games.
“I would like to thank our athletes who were able to perform well even despite the provocations,” Zhukov said, according to the TASS news agency. “Today’s IOC’s decision is very important for us. The ROC is an absolutely full-fledged member of the Olympic family.”
Scores of Russian athletes, coaches and officials were barred after an investigation into the years-long conspiracy that peaked at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, when the state security apparatus colluded with sports officials to swap drugtainted urine samples with clean ones in a clandestine, dead-ofnight operation. The scandal has led to much upheaval in the global sporting movement, with many athletes and some of the IOC’s own members critical of the way it had been dealt with. Richard Pound, the organization’s longest serving member, boycotted the closing of the Pyeongchang Games in protest. The doping scheme has now overshadowed no fewer than three Olympic Games.
Russia was finally punished by the International Olympic Committee in December, about two years after details of what Bach later described as an “unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport” first emerged.
At Sunday’s IOC session, where the plan to rehabilitate Russia was first announced, Nicole Hoevertsz, an official from Aruba tasked with monitoring Russian compliance, said the time had come to move on.
After the two failed drugs tests by Russian athletes — by curler Alexander Krushelnytsky and bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva — the IOC did not lift the suspension for the closing ceremony.
Russia has still not acknowledged there was a state-controlled doping operation in the country, something described in great detail by its former doping laboratory head Grigory Rodchenkov and confirmed by three separate investigations. The World Anti-Doping Agency said it would continue to regard Russia’s domestic drug testing organization as non-compliant until it does.