USA TODAY International Edition
IOC declines to issue blanket ban of Russian athletes.
Decision is one ‘ respecting the rules of justice’
In the face of calls to ban Russia from competing in the upcoming Rio Olympics, the International Olympic Committee on Sunday deferred decisions about the eligibility of the country’s athletes to the international federations that govern each sport.
The decision now moves the heavy lifting of determining whether individual athletes can meet the criteria set out by the IOC to demonstrate sufficient anti- doping records, a challenge for the international federations ( IFs) as the IOC has advised reversing the presumption of innocence.
The IOC’s executive board made the decision that will certainly be unpopular in sport and anti- doping communities. The World Anti- Doping Agency, a group of 14 leaders of national anti- doping organizations and athletes worldwide had called for a collective ban.
“This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world,” IOC President Thomas Bach said. “In this way, we protect these clean athletes because of the high criteria we set to for all the Russian athletes. This may not please everybody on either side. … The result today is one which is respecting the rules of justice and which is respecting the right of all the clean athletes all over the world.”
The IOC’s decision presumes all Russian athletes entered into the Games are considered to be affected by a system that subverted and manipulated anti- doping rules.
That system was revealed in a WADA- commissioned report, which was led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren and re- leased Monday, showed even more widespread doping and government involvement than was previously known.
According to the IOC’s statement, Russian athletes “have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions, and the ‘ presumption of innocence’ cannot be applied to them.”
The Russian Anti- Doping Agency was declared non- compliant in November, and more revelations about doping mean IFs cannot trust negative drug test results from that agency. WADA brought in UK Anti- Doping to take over testing in February, but a WADA report in June detailed attempts at obstruction, obfuscation and avoidance of drug testing.
The IOC said it would only accept entries from the Russian Olympic Committee if athletes could meet the following criteria:
Athletes must provide evidence to full satisfaction of their IF, which should consider reliable international tests and the specifics of the sport and rules
IFs seek from WADA the names and national federations implicated in the McLaren report and that nobody implicated in it be accepted to the Games
The ROC may not enter any athletes who have ever been sanctioned for doping.
The IOC will accept the entry only if it meets those conditions and is upheld by a Court of Arbitration for Sport ( CAS) expert.
Russia’s track and field athletes remain banned collectively after CAS upheld that decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations ( IAAF) last week.
Though the IOC decision was made to attempt to find a balance between collective responsibility and individual justice — which has been the IOC’s stated goal in protecting clean athletes in and outside Russia — it’s most likely to be seen as a punt by the movement’s organization.