IOC president Bach wants life bans for proven Russian cheats

LAUSANNE: Russian athletes and officials who are proven to have been part of a doping “manipulation system” should be banned for life from the Olympics, International Olympic Committee ( IOC) president Thomas Bach said.

Bach gave his personal view on Thursday, one day before Canadian investigator Richard McLaren publishes a final report into alleged state- backed cheating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.

Proof of systematic doping would be “aggravated circumstances” to justify life bans, the IOC leader said at a news conference after a three- day executive board meeting.

“I would not like to see this person again at any Olympic Games in any function,” Bach said, noting that as an IOC disciplinary commission chairman he approved life bans for Austrian team members implicated in doping at the 2006 Turin Winter Games.

However, proving that individual athletes knew of systematic doping involving state agencies could be difficult.

McLaren, who was appointed by the World Anti- Doping Agency ( WADA) in May, is expected to give more detail about cheating operations at the Sochi laboratory.

In his interim report in July, McLaren confirmed claims by former lab director Grigory Rodchenkov of a hole- in- the- wall swapping system aided by the FSB security agency to exchange athletes’ dirty urine samples for clean ones.

Earlier on Thursday, the IOC member appointed to oversee disciplinary cases that arise from McLaren’s evidence acknowledged they could be tough to prove.

“Can you prove ( athletes) were aware?” Oswald said on the sidelines of a sports law conference in Geneva.

“It is not that we would be scared to attack high level people in the Russian regime,” the Swiss lawyer said. “The question is more on the legal point of view. Can you punish athletes if they have done nothing and whether they were not aware of what was happening?”

Bach has also appointed a second IOC commission, headed by former Switzerland President Samuel Schmid, to evaluate if McLaren’s report and evidence proves a staterun doping system.

“And then based on that we will see if we can start cases against athletes,” Oswald said.

Meanwhile, United States lawmakers want Bach to attend a congressional committee hearing next Thursday to provide an update on sports’ fight against doping.

“Unfortunately I cannot attend there,” said Bach, adding that the IOC will “provide by other means all the information they may need.”