Winter Olympic ban for Russia?
IOC to decide if Russian contingent will be banned from Pyeongchang Games
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND— Russia could be banned from competing at the Pyeongchang Olympics, a prospect President Vladimir Putin has already warned would be humiliating for his country.
The decision will come 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.
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:
Atotal 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 anti-doping 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 huge 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.
SOCHI PROGRAM
Rodchenkov said some Russian athletes at the Sochi Olympics used a fast-acting “Duchess” cocktail of performance-enhancing steroids dissolved in alcohol.
During the games, the athletes were protected by a urine-swapping scheme to replace dirty samples with clean urine stored months earlier.
The late-night swaps went via a “mouse hole” into a secured room at the Sochi testing laboratory.
Secret service agents found a way to break into tamper-proof sample bottles and return them with clean urine, Rodchenkov claimed.
RUSSIAN DENIALS
Russia has adamantly denied a statesponsored doping program existed. It blames Rodchenkov, calling him a rogue employee, and wants the scientist extradited from the United States, where he is a protected witness.
“There has never been and will never be any state programs related to doping,” Russian Deputy Prime Minister Vitaly Mutko said on Friday, before the soccer World Cup draw in Moscow.
Mutko said Friday he met “a number of times” with IOC commissions, and risks being banned from the Olympics. The IOC board blocked his accreditation for Rio last year.