Russians should have been banned
At the Winter Olympics in Sochi in early 2014, no Russian athletes tested positive for doping, and to much celebration they took home 33 medals, more than any other nation. But behind the scenes, a system was in place that concealed the use of performance-enhancing drugs by the Russian athletes. Moreover, doping and coverups have been carried out by Russia across a range of international competitions from late 2011 to 2015, according to the report made public by the World AntiDoping Agency and led by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren.
The International Olympic Committee studied the legal options for a collective ban of Russia from the 2016 Rio Games. In fact, the cheating exposed by McLaren more than justifies barring Russia from the Games.
But on Sunday, Olympic leaders rejected calls by anti-doping officials for a complete ban on Russia, instead giving individual sports federations the task of deciding which athletes should be cleared to compete next month.
An earlier investigation of Russia by WADA uncovered doping in track and field, primarily directed by senior coaching officials. Then, The New York Times and CBS’s “60 Minutes” reported in May that doping had also gone on at Sochi. The probe by McLaren, based on interviews, forensic investigation and thousands of pages of documents, went far deeper and established Russian doping and coverups before and after Sochi and “beyond a reasonable doubt.” McLaren concluded it was the Russian government that oversaw and directed the “entirety” of the falsification of test results. Moreover, the report describes how this “systematic scheme” of cheating — in which positive results were made to “disappear” — was modified to remain secret at Sochi.
The Federal Security Service, or FSB, a successor to the Soviet KGB, employed “magicians” who attempted to “surreptitiously open” tamper-proof lids of urine test bottles; FSB people were inserted into the test labs; and the FSB participated in a urine-swapping arrangement at Sochi, sneaking samples through a “mouse hole” cut in a laboratory wall.
Throwing Russia out of the Olympics may have sounded harsh, but so is the fact that Russia’s government has been cheating with drugs for years and covering it up. President Vladimir Putin was in fact boss of a rulebreaking machine. Putin shows little respect for a rules-based international order. The world’s response ought to have been unwavering: This is not acceptable.