No blanket ban on Russia at Rio Olympics
DOPING IOC refrains from barring all athletes, leaves case-by-case decision on relevant sport bodies
IOC leaves decision on individual athletes’ participation to respective sports federations
LAUSANNE: Olympic leaders stopped short on Sunday of imposing a complete ban on Russia from the Rio de Janeiro Games, leaving individual global sports federations to decide which athletes should be cleared to compete.
The decision, announced after a three-hour meeting of the International Olympic Committee’s executive board, came just 12 days before the Aug. 5 opening of the games.
“We had to balance the collective responsibility and the individual justice to which every human being and athlete is entitled to,” IOC president Thomas Bach said.
The IOC rejected calls from the World Anti-Doping Agency and many other anti-doping bodies to exclude the entire Russian Olympic team following allegations of state-sponsored cheating.
Russia’s track and field athletes have already been banned by the IAAF, the sport’s governing body, a decision that was upheld on Thursday by the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and was accepted by the IOC again on Sunday.
Calls for a complete ban on Russia intensified after Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer commissioned by WADA, issued a report Monday accusing Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing a vast doping program of its Olympic athletes. BRAZEN MANUPILATION McLaren’s investigation, based heavily on evidence from former Moscow doping lab director G rigory Rodchenkov, affirmed allegations of brazen manipulation of Russian urine samples at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, but also found that state-backed doping had involved 28 summer and winter sports from 2011 to 2015.
But the IOC board, meeting via teleconference, decided against the ultimate sanction, in line with Bach’s recent statements stressing the need to take individual justice into account.
“An athlete should not suffer and should not be sanctioned for a system in which he was not implicated,” Bach told reporters on a conference call after Sunday’s meeting.
Back acknowledged the decision “might not please everybody.”
“This is not about expectations,” he said. “This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world.”
An athlete should not suffer and should not be sanctioned for a system in which he was not implicated. This is not about expectations. This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world. THOMAS BACH, IOC president
CONDITIONS While deciding against an outright ban, the IOC said it was imposing tough eligibility conditions, including barring entry for the Rio Games of any Russian athlete who has ever been sanctioned for doping.
The IOC said it would accept the entry only of those Russian athletes who meet certain conditions set out for the 28 international federations to apply.
The federations “should carry out an individual analysis of each athlete’s anti-doping record, taking in account only reliable adequate international tests ... in order to ensure a level playing field,” the IOC said.
The committee asked the federations to examine the information and names of athletes and sports implicated in the McLaren report.
Sanction to which she was subject and the circumstances in which she denounced the doping practices which she had used herself, do not satisfy the ethical requirements IOC, on why Stepanova was not allowed