RUSSIANS BANNED

But individuals who prove they are clean could take part under Olympic flag

Putin won’t be happy as all sports set to miss Rio Olympics

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 to a very high standard that they could not possibly have been contaminated by the state-sponsored doping programme. 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, as head of state, could attend.

The country’s IOC members, their National Olympic Committee officials, their judges and international federation representatives, would also be eligible to be there.

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, as what amounts to 28 world championships are staged at a single Games.

The IOC’s stance is in line with how the Russian track-and-field scandal was handled. It was the athletics’ federation, the IAAF under Lord Coe’s presidency, that decided to ban that corrupt team of 68, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week.

However, the ruling does not apply to Yuliya Stepanova, the 800m runner and key whistle-blower, and Florida-based long jumper Darya Klishina. They have received dispensation to compete.

One IOC insider cited gymnastics and equestrianism as two sports that could potentially 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 anti-doping procedures and demonstrably free of Russia’s sphere of corruption, could also be spared the ban.

Lord Coe yesterday spoke to all the summer federations to put his entire team at their disposal, aware that time is on nobody’s side with the Olympics starting a week on Friday.

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 with deep pockets who would look to exploit the possible illegality of an uncompromisingly 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.

The presence in Rio of Sir Craig Reedie, the 75-year-old president of WADA, has also been debated among the IOC’s membership. The Briton is seenen to have been too ready to stand behind the Russians when stories of endemic doping — first revealed by this newspaper in July, 2013 — came to light.

Two damning quotes of Reedie turning a blind eye to the overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing are contained in a letter he wrote to his friend, Natalia Zhelanova, the Russian anti-doping commissar.

In it he referred to Putin’s friend Vitaly Mutko, the sports minister and chairman of the Russia World Cup 2018 organising committee, who is mentioned 27 times in McLaren’s report. Reedie wrote: ‘I wish to make it clear to you and the Minister that there is no action being taken by WADA that is critical of the efforts which I know have been made made, and are being made made, to improve anti-doping efforts in Russia.’

He added: ‘I value the relationship I have with Minister Mutko and I shall be grateful if you (Zhelanova) will inform him that there is no intention in WADA to do anything to affect that relationship.’

Nor did Reedie do himself any favours on Radio 4s Today programme yesterday, when he claimed that drug tampering in the Sochi laboratory during the 2014 Winter Olympics was impossible for WADA to prevent, saying it would have taken a policeman in there all the time to do so.

That a policeman stationed there round the clock was an obvious necessity appeared to have escaped him.

His stint as an IOC vice-president will end after the Rio Games and he is unlikely to hold on to his WADA presidency for long, with a total revamping of the anti-doping struc- ture expected to be enacted in the next few months.

Reedie was given a very hard time at the IOC meeting last week, when he was asked why he was going cap in hand to them to help him sort out a mess that WADA should have been on top of all the time. Despite the disquiet about his laissez-faire approach, he is likely to be in Rio, enjoying the usual IOC perks. Just as the Russian officials are likely to be.

IOC delegates receive in the order of £600 tax free per day during the Games period, which is extended by a board meeting from July 30-31 and the 129th IOC session from August 1-4 prior to the opening ceremony the next day. Five star hotels, first-class flights (for wives as well), tickets to every event are free to the IOC’s high-rollers.

An IOC spokesman said: ‘All the IOC members are volunteers. It is privately funded and redistributes more than 90 per cent of its revenue.’