Russians win gold in men’s hockey
PYEONGCHANG, Korea, Republic Of The massive, state-linked Russian doping scandal didn’t stain the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, IOC President Thomas Bach said Sunday.
It was, however, the subject of the vast majority of the questions Bach fielded as the IOC tried to shake the stigma of Russian cheating that has plagued the last three Olympics — Sochi, Rio de Janeiro and now Pyeongchang.
The IOC doesn’t want it to touch Tokyo’s Summer Olympics in 2 1/2 years.
Just hours before Sunday’s closing ceremony, the IOC ruled that the 160-plus Russian delegation — participating under the neutral “Olympic Athletes from Russia” logo — could not march in the closing ceremony under its own flag. This would have been a signal that Russia was back in the Olympic Family.
Russian athletes produced two of the four positive doping tests in Pyeongchang despite IOC guarantees about intense testing before and during the Olympics.
“These two doping cases have in fact played the major role when coming to the decision of not lifting the suspension,” Bach explained. “This was the key factor.”
However, the IOC also decided that the Russian Olympic Committee will still have its suspension lifted if there are no more positive tests by Russians at the Pyeongchang Games.
Bach gave no timeframe for lifting the suspension, but the testing could be completed in a few days. The IOC stores test samples for a decade when new science can detect cheating, but Bach said Russia would not have to wait that long for reinstatement. This was the IOC’s attempt to “draw a line” under the Russian scandal. “I don’t think, quite frankly, that these Winter Games have been tainted by the Russian affair,” Bach said. The Russian Olympic Committee was banned from the Olympics on Dec. 5 because of widespread doping at the 2014 Sochi Games. But “clean” Russian athletes were allowed to compete under the neutral banner, and the IOC left open the possibility of reinstatement ahead of the closing ceremony if the country met a series of criteria.