Joseph de Pencier, chief executive of the 59-member Institute of National Anti-Doping Organisations, said the International Olympic Committee “failed to confront forcefully the findings of evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia corrupting the Russian sport system”, describing it as “a sad day for clean sport”.
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Australia’s government has questioned the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) leadership in the fight against doping in sport and said Russia’s participation at the Rio 2016 Games risks damaging the reputation of the Olympic movement. “Athletics set the right sentiment for a clean and believable sport”, the 29-year-old said.
Rio 2016 is committed to clean Olympic Games and will follow the decisions on Russian athletes made by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and international sports federations, organising committee president Carlos Nuzman said on Sunday (24 July).
Russian officials and athletes mentioned in the independent report by Richard McLaren, which was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and found the Russian Sports Ministry oversaw a vast programme to manipulate doping test results, won’t be accredited for Rio, the International Olympic Committee said. “This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world”.
“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, and the “presumption of innocence” can not be applied to them”, the IOC said. Individual decision on Russian athletes will be taken by relevant global federations.
Niggli also expressed disappointment that an International Olympic Committee ethics commission ruled that whistleblower athlete Yulia Stepanova could not go to Rio, even competing as a neutral. “We did not want to penalize athletes who are clean with a collective ban and, therefore, keeping them out of the Games”.
“Ms. Stepanova was instrumental in courageously exposing the single biggest doping scandal of all time”. They are now in hiding in the USA in fear for their lives.
Chiller said she was advising Australian Olympians not to be concerned about the decision. “The seven Russian tennis players who have been nominated to compete in Rio have been subject to rigorous anti-doping testing programme outside Russia, which included a total of 205 samples collected since 2014”.
So now you have swimmers who will have to wonder in Rio how they can beat a Russian in the next lane. “The conflict of interest is glaring”.
The IOC said this week that it would not organise or give patronage to any sports event in Russia, including the planned 2019 European Games, and that no member of the Russian Sports Ministry implicated in the report would be accredited for Rio.
WADA executives expressed dismay at Sunday’s International Olympic Committee decision.
“The official position of Russian authorities – the government, president, all of us – is that there’s no place and can’t be any place for doping in sports”, he said last week.
Olympic gold medal-winning rower Mark Hunter told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I’m sickened by it, it was a chance for the IOC to really stand up and make a stand”.
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Anti-doping leaders had argued that the extent of state-backed doping in Russian Federation had tainted the country’s entire sports system, and the only way to ensure a level playing field was to bar the whole team, even if some innocent athletes will lose out.
