Russia barred from Olympics over doping
But individual Russian athletes can compete in Pyeongchang if they test clean, IOC says
Russia is not welcome at the 2018 Winter Olympics: the flag, national anthem and team uniforms, along with the country’s top sport officials, have been banned by the International Olympic Committee.
But many of the athletes, if proven to be free of performance-enhancing drugs, will be allowed to compete in South Korea wearing “OAR” (Olympic Athlete from Russia) uniforms. That compromise — along with a $15-million (U.S.) fine to “build the capacity and integrity of the global anti-doping system” — is how the IOC decided to punish Russia for its state-run doping program that undermined the results of the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, and the 2012 Summer Games in London. IOC president Thomas Bach announced the decision from Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday following a meeting where the executive board was handed yet more evidence that Russia spent years systemically manipulating the anti-doping system and reporting positive samples as negative ones.
This latest report, by former Swiss president Samuel Schmid, “clearly lays out an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and sport,” Bach said.
“I did not have that much faith in the IOC, so I’m really happy that they proved me wrong.” ROSANNA CRAWFORD CANADIAN ATHLETE
Athlete reaction to the IOC’s solution was mixed. Some wanted a full ban while others thought this hit the mark by punishing those responsible for the doping scheme and leaving the door open for athletes who are clean to compete at February’s Pyeonchang Games. But the overwhelming reaction was one of surprise that the IOC had gone so far.
“I did not have that much faith in the IOC, so I’m really happy that they proved me wrong,” said Canadian biathlete Rosanna Crawford.
Russia’s massive scheme to dope its athletes and cover it up was first brought to light by a German journalist in December 2014 —10 months after the Sochi Olympics.
Other more detailed and damming investigations followed, including a report by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren, appointed by the World Anti-Doping Agency, which found the scheme covered 30 sports and tainted Russian results between 2012 and 2015. Throughout those revelations, the IOC twisted itself into knots trying to find a way to appease an outraged sporting community while still keeping Russia happy and its athletes competing.
At last summer’s Rio Olympics — their first chance to make a strong statement — they dumped the problem into the laps of the individual sport federations to decide which Russian athletes could compete. Hundreds of Russian athletes landed in Rio waving their national flag and they won 56 medals.
“After all the softball approaches the IOC has had up until this point, it’s nice that they’re actually showing some willingness to stand up for fairness,” said Tristan Walker, part of Canada’s luge relay team that finished fourth in Sochi behind a Russian team that won silver. “There’s a long way to go for the Olympics to come back to what the Olympics should be about and that’s the world coming together and celebrating differences and competition.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has previously said it would be humiliating for his country to compete without its national symbols and Russia could refuse this offer and boycott the Games.
But, assuming it stands, it will be up to a pre-Games testing panel to decide which Russian athletes will be allowed to compete based on criteria that includes anti-doping measures.
Biathlon, a challenging mix of cross-country skiing and shooting, is a huge sport in Russia with a deep pool of athletes, so Crawford expects to find a full contingent of Russians, in the OAR uniform, on the start line in Pyeongchang.
“There are athletes who are cheating from many different countries but when it’s a state-sponsored thing it’s just so much more mind blowing,” she said. “The (Russian athletes) probably have no choice if they want to or not, either they dope and compete or they don’t dope and they don’t get to follow their dreams.” IOC member and Swiss lawyer Denis Oswald has been verifying the evidence in McLaren’s report to bring cases against individual Russian athletes and, so far, 25 athletes from Sochi have been disqualified, banned from the Olympics for life, and 11 medals stripped.
It’s easy to see the effect cheating athletes have when the medal table turns into a game of musical chairs but the trickle down effect is far greater than that. In Canada, sport funding is often based on top-six or top-eight finishes and an athlete could miss their chance at a podium shot by being left out of the final with a cheating athlete ahead of them. And, in some biathlon races, even a top-60 means getting another race at the Olympics, Crawford said.
The Canadian men’s biathlon relay team was seventh in Sochi — one more spot would have meant a big boost in funding — and there’s still a Russian team with the gold medal. The women’s relay, which Crawford was part of, has already moved to seventh after the Russian team was stripped of their silver medal for a doping violation. She hasn’t gone back to do the math in all five of her Olympic events in Sochi or her many World Cup results. “That would just be like torturing yourself.”
Her bigger concern beyond is that doping by anyone just adds to public cynicism around sport.
“So many people believe that nobody is clean in sport . . . if one person is cheating then everyone must be cheating, so that’s really a bummer, too,” she said.
“But I love biathlon. I don’t do it for the money, I don’t do it for the fame, I do it because I love this sport so much. I believe everybody should be doing it clean and working as hard as we do,” she said, from Austria, where she’s preparing to compete in the second World Cup of the season.
“It will be interesting to be on the shooting range tomorrow morning and see the Russian athletes.”