IOC decides against blanket doping ban for Russia

Whistle-blower Stepanova barred from Rio

LAUSANNE, July 24, (AFP): The International Olympic Committee on Sunday ordered individual sports federations to decide whether Russian competitors should take part in the Rio Games after failing to agree on a complete ban over Russia’s state-run doping.

The IOC executive decided that any Russian athlete wanting to go to Rio, where the Games start on August 5, will have to prove that he or she was not involved in the doping which an independent investigator said was organised by the sports ministry and Russian secret service.

An IOC ethics commission also ruled that 800m runner Yuliya Stepanova, who turned whistleblower on doping in Russian athletics, could not go to Rio even as a neutral.

“We have set the bar to the limit,” IOC president Thomas Bach said after the meeting in defending the action against the worst doping scandal in the Olympic movement’s history.

The IOC had faced widespread pressure for tough action against Russia, which denied any state role in the doping. But many IOC members were said to be reluctant to ban a country completely for the first time over doping.

“Under these exceptional circumstances, Russian athletes in any of the 28 Olympic summer sports have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions,” said the IOC.

It insisted that “the ‘presumption of innocence’ cannot be applied to them.”

But the Olympic leaders said “each affected athlete must be given the opportunity to rebut the applicability of collective responsibility in his or her individual case.”

The IOC said Russian athletes will have to satisfy the 28 federations who run the summer Olympic sports that they are clean. The conditions include:

That “the absence of a positive national anti-doping test cannot be considered sufficient” by the federations.

Federations will have to carry out an individual analysis of each athlete’s anti-doping record “taking into account only reliable adequate international tests, and the specificities of the athlete’s sport and its rules”.

No competitor or national federation named in the report issued last week by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) can be considered. About 20 different summer Olympic sports were accused in the McLaren report.

The damning report said Russia’s sports ministry directed a vast doping programme with support from the state intelligence agency that saw thousands of tainted urine samples destroyed or swapped for clean ones.

The cheating went on during the 2014 Sochi Games and other major Olympic and international events, including the world athletics championship in Moscow in 2013.

WADA, along with 14 national antidoping agencies -- including the United States, Canada and Germany -- and multiple national Olympic committees had called for Russia’s blanket ban from Rio de Janeiro.

Russia’s entire track and field squad had already been banned from the Olympics by athletics’ governing body the IAAF over an earlier WADA report which detailed “state-supported” doping.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) this week rejected an appeal by 67 Russian athletes against the IAAF ban. Russia had strongly denied any state role and railed against many of the conditions imposed by the IOC on Sunday.

Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, a central figure in the WADA report who has already been barred from Rio by the IOC, told the TASS news agency earlier that “the principle of collective responsibility should not triumph”.

The IOC also delivered a crushing blow to Stepanova’s hopes of competing in Rio. She had refused to run for Russia and hoped for a special Olympic charter exemption to compete as a neutral after she gave evidence to WADA.

The IOC ethics commission said : “It is true that Mrs Stepanova’s testimony and public statements have made a contribution to the protection and promotion of clean athletes, fair play and the integrity and authenticity of sport.”

But it added that Olympic rules “run counter to the recognition of the status of neutral athlete.

“Furthermore, the 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 for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games.”

The IOC executive said it would “like to express its appreciation for Mrs Stepanova’s contribution to the fight against doping and to the integrity of sport.”

See Also Page 42

This file photo taken on June 21, 2016 shows International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach speaking during a press conference following an Olympic summit in Lausanne. The International Olympic Committee on July 24, decided not to hit Russia with a blanket for the Rio Games over state-run doping, but said each sports federation needed to establish an athlete’s individual

eligibility. (AFP)

2016 Tour de France winner Chris Froome of Britain celebrates on the podium after the twenty-first and last stage of the Tour de France cycling race over 113

kilometers (70.2 miles) with start in Chantilly and finish in Paris, France on July 24. (AP)

PARIS, July 24, (AFP): Britain’s Chris Froome won his third Tour de France on Sunday to confirm his status as one of the all-time greats on the world’s most gruelling race.

Froome finished with an almost threeminute advantage over Frenchman Romain Bardet with Nairo Quintana, the runner-up in 2013 and 2015, third.

“It’s an absolutely amazing feeling. It feels like a privilege to be in this positon,” said Froome, who praised his Sky team-mates for their support after a day which saw German Andre Greipel win the final stage on Paris’ Champs Elysees.

“I’ve always had my team-mates around me. This race was even tougher (than his previous victories). We haven’t won the team competition but by far we’ve had the strongest team here — I’m incredibly grateful for that.”

Froome won two stages during the race, taking his personal haul to seven in what was his most dominant performance yet.

Having finished just over a minute ahead of Quintana last year, 31-year-old Froome was expected to face his toughest challenge yet as the course was meant to favour the 26-year-old Colombian.

Froome himself described it as “a climber’s Tour” but the man widely lauded as the best climber in the world and expected to push him to his limits, frustrated with his timidity.

Quintana claimed he was suffering from an allergy but his baffling contentment at finishing third — his worst Tour finish — spoke volumes.

The loss of Alberto Contador, who crashed on the opening two stages and then succumbed to illness on the ninth, robbed the race of one of its chief animators.

It was a coming of age for Bardet, who won a stage for the second year in a row and demonstrated impressive progression after finishing sixth in 2014 and ninth last year.

Adam Yates was also a revelation as the 23-year-old Briton came fourth and won the young rider’s white jersey competition.

It was a great Tour for the British as a whole, with Mark Cavendish winning four stages, more than anyone else, as he re-established himself as the world’s best sprinter after three years of being shoved into the shadows by burly German pair Marcel Kittel and Andre Greipel.

Cavendish, the Manx Missile, is now second on the overall stage win list with 30, behind only Eddy Merckx on 34, the five-time Tour winner and Belgian legend still top of the pile.

Britain won a third of the Tour stages, seven in total, with Stephen Cummings claiming a stage for he second year in a row.

For British team Sky, it was a fourth Tour win in five years — an amazing achievement for a team created in 2010, and for a country tha had never had a Tour champion before Bradley Wiggins in 2012.

It might have been Froome’s Tour but Peter Sagan was also a shining light.

The world champion won three stages, claimed the green points jersey for the fifth year in a row and was also named the race’s most combative rider.

The 26-year-old Slovak, who won his first ‘Monument’ one day classic race in April at the Tour of Flanders, is getting stronger all the time.

He’s not a climber but the general feeling is that if he decided to lose weight and dedicate himself to Grand Tours, he would probabl win this race one day.

Rafal Majka of Poland won the king of the mountains jersey for the second time in three years but his only competition came from Belgian Thomas De Gendt, who is not even a climber.

The Tour finished with a record 175 riders reaching the line in Paris while Australia’s Chloe Hosking won the wom-

Australia’s Chloe Hosking celebrates as she crosses the finish line and winning the third edition of La Course by Le Tour de France 89 kms women one day cycling race on July 24, on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris.

(AFP)

en’s 89km one-day race around Paris that preceded the arrival of the men’s peloton.

It was also a Tour that was remarkable, if not for the racing, a couple of memorable moments.

The first saw Yates knocked off his bike by an inflatable arch 1km from the finish of the seventh stage.

The other was the sight of Froome running to the finishing line on the iconic Mont Ventoux after his bike was broken in a crash with a motorcycle.

A list of Tour de France winners over the last 25 years:

2016: Chris Froome (GBR), 2015:

Chris Froome (GBR), 2014: Vincenzo Nibali (ITA), 2013: Chris Froome (GBR), 2012: Bradley Wiggins (GBR), 2011: Cadel Evans (AUS), 2010: Andy Schleck (LUX) *, 2009: Alberto Contador (ESP), 2008: Carlos Sastre (ESP), 2007: Alberto Contador (ESP), 2006: Oscar Pereiro (ESP) **, 2005: ***, 2004: ***, 2003: ***, 2002: ***, 2001: ***, 2000: ***, 1999: ***, 1998: Marco Pantani (ITA), 1997: Jan Ullrich (GER), 1996: Bjarne Riis (DEN), 1995: Miguel Indurain (ESP), 1994: Miguel Indurain (ESP), 1993: Miguel Indurain (ESP), 1992: Miguel Indurain (ESP)