IOC ruling against Russia levels the playing field,

Who could have imagined that the International Olympic Committee, of all the credibility-challenged organizations operating in all the gold-medal comfort in all the world, would do what U.S. President Donald Trump can’t or won’t?

Stand up to Russia. Call the country out on malfeasance. And make it pay a price.

This week, the IOC executive board voted to ban the Russian Olympic team from the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, for its state-sponsored doping of athletes and calculated undermining of drug-testing regimes.

Russian officials are prohibited from attending the Winter Games in February. The Russian flag will not be displayed at the opening ceremony. The Russian anthem will not be played.

To underscore the message, former Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko, now the country’s deputy prime minister and head of the 2018 World Cup there, was handed a lifetime ban from the Olympics.

Russian athletes verified as clean may compete as individuals. Vladimir Putin insisted on Wednesday that his government won’t stop them from taking part. But given the anger in Russia over the IOC’s move, the pressure to abstain will be overwhelming.

In all, this was stunning and heartening action, coming from an organization that has been described as acting as its own autocratic state and accused of moral bankruptcy, fraudulent voting processes, lack of transparency and accountability, undemocratic governance and corruption of many stripes.

It was especially astonishing given the observation of Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, a University of Toronto professor, author and tenacious critic of the Olympics industry, that relative immunity to international censure was a trait shared by the IOC and the Russia of Vladimir Putin.

In the ancient founders’ imaginings, the essence of the Olympics was surely to be seen in such glorious moments as Canadian swimming sensation Penny Oleksiak, her teenage head emerging from the pool two years ago at race’s end in Rio, glancing back at the scoreboard, and breaking into transcendent joy at the realization she’d won gold.

That was the Olympics at its best, but only the part of the Olympics above the surface.

Below, book after book in recent decades has chronicled a sporting tournament corrupted by rampant commercialism, bribery, rigged bidding, drug use and exploitation of host cities and, more often than not, their poorest residents.

That cynicism and hypocrisy, coming from an organization that purports to speak so idealistically for the youth of the world and to represent harmony among nations, was breathtaking.

Andrew Jennings, a British journalist and author who came to international fame for revealing IOC corruption, once said he had grown tired telling the same old stories about “the same old criminals” and intended to stop “before I begin to bore myself.”

Well, as Martin Luther King Jr. said, the arc of the moral universe is long, but to those who seek justice a bending will come.

This week, with a playing field rendered distinctly more level, it did.