Russia case chaos

THE head of UK Sport expressed ‘surprise’ and ‘disappointment’ last night after 28 Russians banned by the International Olympic Committee over the country’s state-sponsored doping scandal managed to get their decisions reversed.

Liz Nicholl, the organisation’s chief executive, said the IOC had acted correctly in imposing ‘the highest possible sanctions’ on Russian competitors.

But in a decision which represents a major blow to the IOC’s approach to Russia’s statesponsored doping regime, the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s verdicts reflected the difficulty of converting evidence of Russian cheating into clear-cut individual doping cases.

The CAS verdicts, which saw a further 11 Russians have their punishments watered down, were confused. Some athletes in the same events were cleared while fellow competitors were found to be ‘sufficiently guilty.’

The verdicts will certainly be seized upon by the Russian state as evidence of how the bans, and Professor Richard McLaren’s investigation which prompted them, were part of a western conspiracy.

The IOC was slow to act against Russia, falling short of the blanket ban of athletes at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics which the International Paralympic Committee adopted for its own Games in Brazil. The wisdom of imposing individual bans always did look questionable.

Among those now cleared of cheating at Sochi 2014 are men’s Olympic skeleton champion Aleksander Tretiakov and current women’s European and World Cup skeleton champion Elena Nikitina.