The IOC rejected calls for Russia to be banned from next month’s Games over its doping record on Sunday, putting the onus on worldwide sports federations to decide whether individual athletes should be allowed to compete.
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“We have set the bar to the limit by establishing strict criteria every Russian athlete will have to fulfil”.
A scathing WADA report issued last week said more than 30 Russian sports had gained advantages from government backed schemes to manipulate anti-doping rules.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) initially suspended the Russian track and field teams after a report from the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) claimed Russia was using a systematic doping programme between 2011 and 2015.
“ANOC commends the IOC for favouring individual justice over collective responsibility and giving worldwide federations responsibility to ensure clean competitions in their sports at Rio 2016”, he said.
The 200m butterfly swimmer has expressed his disappointment labelling the decision “an absolute cop out from the IOC”, and is urging athletes not to share the podium with any Russian medallists.
IPC president Sir Philip Craven said the report indicated an unimaginable scale of institutionalised doping in Russian sport orchestrated at the highest level.
The team could be without some of its star names in Rio because of the International Olympic Committee measure barring any Russians who have previously served doping bans.
Athletics – European championships – Women’s 800m qualifiaction – Amsterdam – 6/7/16 Yulia Stepanova of Russian Federation competes.
The United States Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) chided the International Olympic Committee for “refusing to take decisive leadership” whill UK Sports Minister Tracey Crouch voiced out the “need for stronger sanctions”.
The IOC ethics commission said that while Stepanova “made a contribution to the protection and promotion of clean athletes”, Olympic rules did not permit the entry of neutrals. She will instead be invited to Rio as a “guest”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that the affair could split the Olympic movement, bringing echoes of the 1980s when the US-led a political boycott of the Moscow Games of 1980, and the Soviet Union led an eastern bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later. CAS dismissed the appeal by the Russian Olympic Committee against the IAAF Thursday.
Worldwide federations will have only days to process the Russian cases, and some have little experience in handling doping matters. “Furthermore, the sanction to which she was subject and the circumstances in which she denounced the doping practices which she had used herself, do not satisfy the ethical requirements for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games”.
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“We all have a responsibility to protect the integrity of Paralympic sport, which we now know has been mocked and threatened by a doping culture endemic within Russian sport”, Anderson said.
