Bach continues to be all out of tune

IF THE Pyeongchang Games have taught us anything, it is that while Thomas Bach remains in charge, the International Olympic Committee are the enemies of clean sport. Only a second failed drugs test — the most, to this point, of any country at the 2018 Olympics — prevented Russia being reinstated to the movement in time for the closing ceremony; but their return is imminent, maybe today, certainly before the end of this week. Bach can barely wait to welcome his friend Vladimir Putin, Russia’s many bent sporting associations and their government-corrupted spawn back to the Olympic bosom, despite a list of crimes that should have sunk them for two full Olympic cycles, at least. It turns out Rio Ferdinand will have received a longer ban for one missed drugs test than Russia has for a systemic state-sponsored programme that has corrupted a fouryear sequence and probably more. That two supposedly clean Russian athletes tested positive in South Korea shows how endemic this culture has become. Russia has created a generation for whom drugs are the default response to competition, yet Bach as good as negotiated their hasty return — with Nicole Hoevertsz, chair of the Olympic Athletes from Russia implementation group, even admitting she had been asked to ‘tweak’ a report, to state the Russian Olympic Committee had no role in the most recent test failures. ‘We wanted to clarify that the ROC was absolutely not involved in this and that they were isolated cases,’ said Hoevertsz. ‘We really tweaked and clarified that.’ At whose instruction? Bach got very defensive at the unfortunate inference of the word ‘tweak’ but it was too late. No one believed the IOC went into these games with any other intention than having Russia returned in an official capacity by the end of them. The Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations says the IOC’s stance over Russia has travelled the full distance, from bad to worse. ‘Clean athletes who have had their Olympic moments stolen, whether it be by missing a medal or even failing to qualify as a result of false results achieved by Russian athletes, deserve a more principled and steadfast response,’ read a statement. ‘Successive decisions by the IOC have demonstrated that the interests of these clean athletes have no priority.’ Yet just as corrupt FIFA was the work of Sepp Blatter, so Bach rules the modern IOC. That they are now seen as working against clean sport will be his legacy and, like Blatter’s, it will take decades to remove the stain.