International Olympic Committee set to ban Russia from Rio games
THE International Olympic Committee will today ban the Russian team from competing under their national flag at Rio 2016.
Short of a remarkable late fudge during a phone conference of their executive board this morning, the IOC will announce the most momentous decision in 120 years of Olympic sport.
However, the ban on the intended 387-strong contingent will come with conditions. An Olympic insider told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The IOC want to ban Russia to show this is an assault on the whole of sport. That effectively means expulsion from Rio.
‘But Thomas Bach (the IOC president) also wants to give consideration to the rights of individuals.’
It is understood, therefore, that the IOC will ask the international federations, the bodies responsible for specific Olympic sports, to examine whether potential Russian competitors can prove that they could not possibly have been contaminated by statesponsored doping. They would then be allowed to compete under the Olympic banner.
There is also a strong call from senior IOC figures to ban the whole Russian team for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
While there is a chance that a two-Games ban will be agreed, it appeared unlikely last night that a desire among some hardliners to bar every Russian official or grandee from Rio will win majority approval. That would mean Vladimir Putin could attend as could the country’s IOC members and other officials.
President Bach, of Germany, has been told by close associates that today’s decision will define his presidency. One of his quandaries, as he sees it, is between doing what is right for the sporting reputation of the Olympic Games on one hand, while knowing that acting tough with Russia may splinter the movement irrevocably on the other.
If today’s phone conference endorses Bach’s plans — a ban with caveats — he could claim to have come down on the side of clean sport ahead of political expediency.
Behind the scenes, the international federations have already been primed by the IOC to sort out the problem within their own sports.
Although the IOC could ban the whole team without recourse to the federations, that is not the way the Olympic family usually works. Each federation draws up its own rules and decides which events to include on the programme.
The IOC’s stance is in line with how the Russian trackand-field scandal was handled. It was athletics’ federation, the IAAF under Sebastian Coe’s presidency, that decided to ban that corrupt team, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week. Two-time Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva, called the decision a ‘funeral for athletics’ and ‘a blatant political order’
However, the ruling does not apply to Yuliya Stepanova, the 800m runner and key whistleblower, and Florida-based long jumper Darya Klishina. They have dispensation to compete.
One IOC insider cited gymnastics and equestrianism as two sports that could send competitors to Rio. Neither sport was named among those implicated in 577 failed tests, 312 of which were covered up by Russian officialdom, in the World Anti-Doping Agency commissioned report into the country’s doping produced by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren last week.
Those who train abroad, who are subject to stringent antidoping procedures and demonstrably free of Russia’s sphere of corruption, could also be spared the ban.
The slight loophole in the IOC’s course of action not only guards against the injustice of genuinely clean competitors being excluded, but also strengthens the IOC’s hand in any future litigation from Russian lawyers who would look to exploit the possible illegality of a blanket ban.
President Putin has not yet specified how Russia will react, preferring to wait to hear today’s IOC decision from their headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.