‘Members’ Club’ jibe strikes sour note as row over doping drags on
THE RUSSIAN deputy prime minister was a dissenting voice to the chorus of conciliation that set the tone for the Olympic opening ceremony.
The event, said Vitaly Mutko, had become an exclusive membership club.
Invitations had not been extended to 45 of his country’s athletes and two coaches whose appeals against exclusion had been rejected just nine hours before the formalities began.
“This will diminish competition and attention to the Games,” Mutko complained.
Russia is banned from the Games following investigations into the use of performance-enhancing drugs at the Winter Olympics of 2014, which it hosted.
But 169 of its athletes are being allowed to compete as representatives of “Olympic Athletes from Russia” – a group that is the third biggest in Pyeongchang, behind the US and Canada.
No national anthem will accompany any of them to the winners’ rostrum.
The International Olympic Committee and the World AntiDoping Agency welcomed yesterday’s last-minute ruling – as did Jim Walden, the lawyer for Grigory Rodchenkov, mastermind of the 2014 scandal and the whistleblower who brought it to the attention of the authorities.
Mr Walden said the IOC was “complicit in enabling Russian doping” and called for the resignation of its president Thomas Bach, whose tenure has been dogged by the scandal.
Mr Bach did not mention Russia in his speech – and its remaining 168 athletes, who could not display their national flag, slipped into the stadium relatively unnoticed.