IOC weighs Russian Olympic ban, risks provoking Putin

LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND » Russia could be banned from competing at the Pyeongchang Olympics, a prospect that President Vladimir Putin has already warned would be humiliating for his country.

The decision will come on Tuesday when the International Olympic Committee executive board meets in Lausanne, less than nine weeks before the games open on Feb. 9 in South Korea.

The 14-member board, which includes two Americans, has received a so-far confidential report from an IOC-appointed panel. That panel was asked to assess if Russian state agencies did organize the doping program used at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

IOC President Thomas Bach, a German lawyer long seen as an ally of Russia, is scheduled to announce the decision at 7:30 p.m. (1830 GMT).

It might not be the last word, however. Russia can challenge any IOC sanction by appealing to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

Here is a look at the case, and the possible results:

Punishment options

• A total ban on Russia competing in Pyeongchang.

• Some Russian athletes compete, if judged to be clean under long-term doping controls operating to international standards. They would be classed as neutral athletes competing under the Olympic flag, and would be denied hearing the Russian anthem if they win Olympic gold. Those rules were imposed on Russian athletes at the athletics world championships in August.

Putin has said either of those outcomes would be humiliating, and could provoke a Russian boycott.

• The IOC board could ask the seven governing bodies for Winter Olympic sports to decide on individual athlete eligibility. That compromise applied to the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

• Impose a fine on the Russian Olympic committee. Tens of millions of dollars could go toward antidoping work worldwide.

A financial penalty would be “grossly inappropriate,” according to Joseph de Pencier, chief executive of iNADO, a global group of national anti-doping agencies.

“It would send exactly the wrong message,” de Pencier said. “It’s pay to play.”

Timeline

A big red flag regarding Russian doping went up in July 2013, weeks before Moscow hosted the athletics worlds. British newspaper the Mail on Sunday reported wrongdoing by Grigory Rodchenkov and the Moscow laboratory he directed, but its claims were mostly ignored.

In December 2014, 10 months after the Sochi Olympics, German network ARD broadcast a film by journalist Hajo Seppelt about extensive doping in Russian athletics using footage secretly filmed by whistleblowers.

The World Anti-Doping Agency later appointed an investigation panel chaired by Richard Pound, a longserving IOC member. That panel included Richard McLaren. Their reports in November 2015 and January 2016 led to the suspension of Russia’s athletics federation, anti-doping agency, and the Moscow lab.

The Pound team interviewed Rodchenkov and concluded he was a key part of a conspiracy of supplying banned drugs, covering up doping cases, and extorting athletes.

Rodchenkov fled to the United States and detailed in a May 2016 interview with the New York Times how, as lab director for the Sochi Games, he helped Russian athletes cheat. He said 15 of Russia’s 33 medals were tainted.

WADA appointed McLaren to verify the fresh allegations. Within two months, he delivered an interim report before the Rio Olympics which upheld Rodchenkov’s evidence.

“It can’t possibly be done by a couple of rogue individuals, or even a rogue department of an organization,” McLaren said last week of Russia’s doping program.

The IOC then set up two commissions. One chaired by IOC member Denis Oswald verified McLaren’s evidence to prosecute cases of Russian athletes from Sochi.