The IOC Executive Board decided on Sunday not to suspend the entire Russian team from the 2016 Olympics and let each worldwide sports federation determine respective athletes’ eligibility.
Advertisement
“The IOC is taking a risk with this controversial decision but they know that with such limited time, any serious Russian challenge is extremely hard”, an Olympics insider with direct knowledge of the affair, told Reuters on Monday.
The International Olympic Committee opted against a blanket ban on Russia for running a state-sponsored doping programme, and asked each sport to vet their own proposed Russian competitors.
The IOC said it will be up to individual sports’ governing bodies to rule whether Russian athletes would be permitted to participate next month in Rio.
The World Anti-Doping Agency last week called for Russian Federation to be banned after detailing how Russia’s sports ministry had directed a massive cheating programme with help from the FSB state intelligence agency.
Russian Federation breathed a sigh of relief after the IOC declined to impose a blanket ban on its competitors at the Rio Games over state-run doping, but the decision met fierce criticism elsewhere with Olympic chiefs branded “spineless”.
Pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda said the International Olympic Committee had taken the “safest route for itself”.
The Slovenian Olympic Committee has welcomed the International Olympic Committee’s decision not to exclude Russian Federation from the Rio Olympics, Slovenian Press Agency (STA) reported.
The focus will now be on the Olympic sports to let in Russians who they believe are drug-free. “This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world”.
The spokesman stressed the necessity of closer cooperation with the IOC and its structures, as well as with global sports organizations, in order to eliminate the consequences of the doping scandal involving Russian athletes and sports officials.
Even the Rio ambitions of the track and field athlete who helped to expose the doping scheme, Yulia Stepanova, are over. In recognition of her bravery as a whistleblower, and her contributions to the fight against doping, the IOC Executive Board is inviting Ms. Stepanova as a guest to the Rio games and suggesting that she could join a National Olympic Committee in the future.
– asked the federations to examine the information and names of athletes and sports implicated in the McLaren report, saying any of those implicated should not be allowed into the games.
Bach said the International Olympic Committee had decided instead on a set of “very tough criteria” that could dent Russia’s overall contingent and medal hopes in Rio, where the Olympics will open on August 5.
Advertisement
Russians “have to clear the highest hurdles in order to have chance to compete in the Olympic Games”, he added.
