IOC lets Russia off too easy in doping scandal
RIO DE JANEIRO — No question. Russia is getting off the hook in the country’s ongoing Olympic doping scandal.
At the same time, hundreds of Russian athletes were put through the wringer this week for no good reason.
A bizarre contradiction? Of course. Only at the Olympics.
For a long while, it appeared that the following scenario might actually take place: Friday night, hundreds of athletes in Russian parade uniforms would line up outside Maracana Stadium for the Opening Ceremonies. And at the last minute, some would receive taps on the shoulders.
“Not so fast,” someone would say with a Slavic accent.
And instead of marching into the stadium, those athletes would be put on a bus to the airport. Or maybe slide down a trap door and directly onto a ship bound for Moscow.
Yes, there have been many screwy episodes in the Olympic Games history. But the current Russian doping one has blazed new screwy mountain bike trails, littered with steroid needles.
Here’s the story: Two weeks ago, an investigation concluded that Russians had engaged in a systematic doping of athletes, through an operation with high-level ties to the government. The recommendation by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) was a complete ban on Russian participation from the 2016 Games.
“Not so fast,” said the International Olympic Committee (IOC), in many different accents.
The IOC, which consists of big shots from all around the world who have connections to political big shots who rely on contributions from big shot Olympic sponsors, quickly decided to reject the WADA recommendation.
What happened instead? Under the leadership of IOC president Thomas Bach, a former Olympic fencer, the task of banning athletes from these Rio Games was farmed out to the governing bodies of all 39 Olympic sports. Those governing bodies were tasked with deciding which Russian athletes, on an individual basis, should compete or not compete based on how the governing bodies assessed the case against each one.
This was a little like organizing a grade school field trip by asking 39 classroom teachers with hundreds of students to decide which of those students might have been chewing gum behind the teachers’ backs – and then banning those students from the field trip on an arbitrary basis.
“We have applied a system of justice,” said Bach when he met with the media here Thursday.
More like a system of chaos.
As of Thursday afternoon, Bach admitted, many Russian athletes still did not know if they had been banned. They were wandering around the Athletes’ Village as sort of Olympic limbo zombies, pondering whether they existed or not.
Finally, late in the day, they learned. Every banned and non-banned athlete was notified of his or her fate. An in the end, 271 of the 389 on Russia’s original Olympic entry list will be allowed to compete.
That’s two-thirds of the roster. Two thirds! Two! Thirds!
And that’s a big fat nyet in my book.
Yes, I feel for the Russian competitors who had to wait around so long to know whether they were going to be part of the team. Especially if they were clean athletes.
If you peruse the WADA investigative report, however, you conclude that the Russian athletes who wanted to stay clean might have had a fight doing so.
The report outlines how Russian sports officials set up a detailed blueprint to cover up dirty urine tests or manipu- lated those tests to keep certain athletes eligible to compete — and tossed a few others to the WADA wolves as guilty, to make it appear as if the Russian system was honest.
The whole business stinks worse than a Brazilian rowing lagoon. The mission of illegal doping is to be so good at it that no one detects the cheating, right? Does anyone believe that all of those Russian athletes who were cleared to compete because they seemed to be clean are truly clean?
A conspiracy theory holds that Bach owed Russia a favor because leader Vladimir Putin authorized the spending of $50 billion to stage the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. And I have a rule about Olympic conspiracy theories, whether they involve gymnastics judging or IOC paybacks: They are always true.
To be sure, critics have tried to poke holes in the WADA report. Supposedly, it relies too much on one whistle-blower’s testimony. But the whistleblower’s story was backed by hard evidence. And if just half the information is true, Russia’s sports establishment still deserves far worse punishment than the two-thirds solution.
The IOC should have followed the WADA request to reject all Russian participation in the Games. That wouldn’t have ended all doping forever in the country – I am not naïve about that – but it would have sent a stronger message than the one sent Thursday.
I can imagine how that message was received by other country’s athletes when they heard. Actually, I can imagine. Michael Phelps gave me a clue.
“I think I can honestly say that in my career, I don’t think I’ve ever competed in a clean sport,” Phelps said in his session with the media this week. “We’ve had this problem for how many Olympics now? It seems every time it’s something. It’s sad. That’s really what it is. It’s really sad that we can’t control it, that somebody who is in charge cannot control this.”
The person who is in charge, Bach, might be a fencer. But he climbed up on his high horse to defend his actions. He believed that banning all Russian athletes would have been a “nuclear option” and lacked integrity. Yes, really. That’s what he claimed.
“You cannot answer one violation of the law with another violation of the law,” Bach said Thursday. “That would destroy justice.”
Not so fast, said nobody in any language. Because by now, the entire Olympic movement seems resigned to the situation. With so many cheaters, justice in the Olympics has been destroyed over and over.
Now, let’s march. Read Mark Purdy’s blog at blogs.mercurynews. com/purdy. Contact him at mpurdy@bayareanewsgroup.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/MercPurdy.