Olympics ban for all Russians
Out for doping: report
All Russian athletes will be kicked out of the upcoming Olympics because of a massive state-run doping operation, according to a report.
The Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper, said the unprecedented ban will apply to all 387 men and women on Russia’s teams.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport has already handed Moscow a huge defeat — rejecting an appeal by 67 of its track and field athletes, who have been ruled ineligible to compete in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, beginning Aug. 5.
The International Olympic Committee’s 15-member executive board is meeting by teleconference Sunday and will deliver the same bad news to the rest of the Russian contingent, the newspaper said, quoting “well placed sources.’’
On Monday, Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, released a report accusing Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing a doping program.
His probe relied heavily on evidence from former Moscow doping lab direc- tor Grigory Rodchenkov, the Associated Press said.
Rodchenkov confirmed reports of manipulation of Russian urine samples at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi and also disclosed athletes competing in 28 summer and winter sports from 2011 to 2015 had taken illegal substances.
IOC President Thomas Bach declared the IOC “will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organization implicated.” But he also wrote of balancing “individual justice’’ with “collective punishment.’’ Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev struck a similar theme in a letter to Bach on Friday.
“I am worried and deeply upset by the possibility that in the case of a ban on Russian athletes competing in the Olympics, the innocent will be punished along with the guilty,” he wrote, noting he feels “the principle of collective punishment is unacceptable.”
Russia getting a wholesale heave-ho for doping would be the first such punishment in the games’ history.
A total ban could be challenged in the sports arbitration court.