Good riddance to Team Russia

The next Olympics won’t be the same without Russia. And that’s a good thing. In the wake of the International Olympic Committee’s gusty move to ban that country from the 2018 Winter Games, the competition has less chance of being degraded by doped-up athletic cheaters who have been actively enabled by their dishonest, collaborating government.

Because that’s exactly what the Russians did when they hosted the last Games in Sochi in 2014 and won nearly a fifth of the medals there.

Thanks to the IOC, however, when the next Olympics begin in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February, sports-lovers around the world can have greater confidence of seeing fair contests between marvellous, drug-free competitors.

The decision announced by the IOC on Tuesday is as strong as it is all-encompassing. There will be no Russian team at the next Winter Games.

Members of the Russian Olympic Committee cannot attend. All Russian officials have been banned. The Russian flag will not be displayed. The Russian anthem will not sound. No Russian uniform will be worn.

Despite these tough sanctions, Russian athletes who receive special permission to compete will be allowed to do so, but as individuals wearing a neutral uniform.

And however well they perform, the official records from these Games will declare that Russia won no medals.

Such punishment meted out to an entire nation is unprecedented yet justified.

The cheating and corruption shown by Russia was also unprecedented.

Athletes who compete and win with drugs are, sadly, nothing new. It’s now clear that East German athletes routinely did this in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s.

Even Canada, which considers itself an international good guy, felt shame when Ben Johnson was stripped of the 100metre gold medal he won at the 1988 Summer Games after testing positive for a banned steroid.

But it was far worse in Russia’s case: The government approved and publicly funded a doping program led by the nation’s sporting establishment and joined by more than 1,000 athletes over at least 10 years. In Russia’s case, the rot infected the entire system. In one of the most egregious incidents, a team assembled by Russia’s sports ministry tampered with more than 100 urine samples at the 2014 Sochi Games to hide evidence of top Russian athletes’ steroid use during the competition.

As a result, 25 Russian athletes who competed at those Olympics have been suspended for life and 11 medals taken away in six sports.

Faced with these facts, some will say the IOC should have banned all Russian athletes from the coming Games, and a case can be made for doing this.

But to allow Russian athletes who obey the rules to compete as private individuals does not diminish the condemnation of one of the world’s great sporting nations.

In no uncertain terms, the IOC has denounced Russia for its dishonesty, for encouraging potentially harmful drug use and tainting the Olympics’ reputation.

These are not small things. Let’s hope cheaters everywhere pay attention.

Now may the clean Games begin.