Cheaters never prosper
The International Olympic Committee has banned Russia from the Winter Olympics in South Korea. Russian athletes deemed untainted by doping will be allowed to compete, but only under a neutral flag, not a Russian one. They won’t wear their spiffy new uniforms, instead relegated to outfits branded with the acronym “OAR,” Olympic Athlete from Russia. If they win a medal, they’ll hear the Olympic anthem, not Russia’s. Russia’s medal count at Pyeongchang can already be put into the record books: zero.
It’s a punishment unprecedented in the history of the Olympics, and one that IOC officials said fits the unprecedented scale of Russia’s cheating. It’s also the right move. The ruling strives to preserve the integrity of the Olympic movement, an ideal that for years has been battered by bribery scandals, runaway commercialization and, of course, doping. This ruling has the right amount of hurt.
The impetus for the IOC’s ruling Tuesday was the avalanche of evidence that Russian athletes benefited from a state-engineered doping program at the Winter Games that Russia hosted in Sochi in 2014.
Russia at first denied everything, then tried to blame it all on Grigory Rodchenkov, the Russian anti-doping director who carried out the doping program at the behest of his bosses. Before the Summer Games in Rio, he blew the whistle on what happened and fled for the U.S. Since then, investigators have confirmed the allegations. The man behind the scheme was Russia’s sports minister at the time, Vitaly Mutko.
Banning Russia from the Olympics was necessary for the sake of the legions of other athletes who compete with brawn, brains, speed and grit — and without any kind of pharmacological edge. It also draws a line in the sand for any other country that embarks on a state-sponsored scheme to skirt the rules. The spirit of the Olympics is at stake. If the spectacle is to survive, its overseers need to reassure the world that cheating will not be tolerated, period, and that the best place for cheaters at the Olympic Games is on the outside, looking in.