Russia to know 2018 Winter Olympics fate on Dec 5

GENEVA: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) will decide on Dec 5 if Russia can compete at the Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Russia faces being banned from the Feb 9-25 Games in South Korea as punishment for state-backed doping at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

The IOC said yesterday that a “decision with regard to the participation of Russian athletes in the Olympic Winter Games Pyeongchang 2018 will be taken” by their executive board on the opening day of a Dec 5-6 meeting in Lausanne.

IOC president Thomas Bach is scheduled to announce the decision at a news conference on that day.

Bach has criticised sport officials who call for a total ban on Russia, which could be offered sanctions that would allow some athletes to compete if they also have met stricter standards of doping controls.

Russian president Vladimir Putin has said it would be “degrading” for its athletes to take part in the Winter Games as a neutral team and be denied their national flag and anthem.

That happened in August at the World Athletics Championships, where some Russian athletes won medals despite the Russian athletics body being suspended by the IAAF in fallout from the doping scandals.

The IOC board are awaiting reports from two commissions they created to verify evidence detailed by World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) investigator Richard McLaren last year, weeks before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

One panel led by IOC board member Denis Oswald is prosecuting around 30 individual Russian athletes who are suspected of doping violations at Sochi.

There, tainted samples were swapped with clean urine in the WADA-accredited testing laboratory. — AP