RUSSIA BOOTED OUT OF GAMES

But individuals could feature under Olympic flag

THE International Olympic Committee will today ban the Russian team from competing under their national flag at Rio 2016.

Short of a remarkable late fudge during a phone conference of their executive board this morning, the IOC will announce the most momentous decision in 120 years of Olympic sport.

However, the ban on the intended 387-strong contingent will come with conditions.

An Olympic insider told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The IOC want to ban Russia to show this is an assault on the whole of sport. That effectively means expulsion from Rio.

‘But Thomas Bach (the IOC president) also wants to give consideration to the rights of individuals.’

It is understood, therefore, that the IOC will ask the international federations, the bodies responsible for specific Olympic sports, to examine whether potential Russian competitors can prove to a very high standard that they could not possibly have been contaminated by the state-sponsored doping programme. They would then be allowed to compete under the Olympic banner.

There is also a strong call from senior IOC figures to ban the whole Russian team for the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea.

While there is a chance that a two-Games ban will be agreed, it appeared unlikely last night that a desire among some hardliners to bar every Russian official or grandee from Rio will win majority approval. That would mean Vladimir Putin, as head of state, could attend.

The country’s IOC members, their National Olympic Committee officials, their judges, and international federation representatives, would also be eligible to be there.

President Bach, of Germany, has been told by close associates that today’s decision will define his presidency. One of his quandaries, as he sees it, is between doing what is right for the sporting reputation of the Olympic Games on one hand, while knowing that acting tough with Russia may splinter the movement irrevocably on the other.

If today’s phone conference endorses Bach’s plans — a ban with caveats — he could claim to have come down on the side of clean sport ahead of political expediency.

Behind the scenes, the international federations have already been primed by the IOC to sort out the problem within their own sports.

Although the IOC could ban the whole team without recourse to the federations, that is not the way the Olympic family usually works. Each federation draws up its own rules and decides which events to include on the programme, as what amounts to 28 world championships are staged at a single Games.

The IOC’s stance is in line with how the Russian track-and-field scandal was handled. It was the athletics’ federation, the IAAF under Lord Coe’s presidency, that decided to ban that corrupt team of 68, a decision that was upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport last week.

However, the ruling does not apply to Yulia Stepanova, the 800metres runner and key whistle-blower, and Florida-based long jumper Darya Klishina. They have received dispensation to compete.

One IOC insider cited gymnastics and equestrianism as two sports that could potentially send competitors to Rio. Neither sport was named among those implicated in 577 failed tests, 312 of which were covered up by Russian officialdom, in the World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned report into the country’s doping produced by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren last week.

Those who train abroad, who are subject to stringent anti-doping procedures and demonstrably free of Russia’s sphere of corruption, could also be spared the ban.

Lord Coe yesterday spoke to all the summer federations to put his entire team at their disposal, aware that time is on nobody’s side with the Olympics starting a week on Friday.

The slight loophole in the IOC’s course of action not only guards against the injustice of genuinely clean competitors being excluded, but also strengthens the IOC’s hand in any future litigation from Russian lawyers with deep pockets who would look to exploit the possible illegality of an uncompromisingly blanket ban.

President Putin has not yet specified how Russia will react, preferring to wait to hear today’s IOC decision from their headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland.

The presence in Rio of Sir Craig Reedie, the 75-year-old president of WADA, has also been debated among the IOC’s membership. Stirling-born Reedie is seen to have been too ready to stand behind the Russians when stories of endemic doping — revealed by this newspaper in July, 2013 — came to light.

His stint as an IOC vice-president will end after the Rio Games and he is unlikely to hold on to his WADA presidency for long, with a total revamping of the anti-doping structure expected to be enacted in the next few months.

Reedie was given a very hard time at the IOC meeting last week, when he was asked why he was going cap in hand to them to help him sort out a mess that WADA should have been on top of all the time.