Bach says several hiccups at the athletes’ village have been solved, that water quality at the sailing venue is according to the standards of the World Health Organization, and that the crucial metro line to Olympic venues has finally opened.
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WADA had demanded a blanket ban on Russian athletes in Rio following the McLaren report.
He won a singles gold medal for Spain at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, but missed the 2012 London Games with a knee injury.
IOC President Thomas Bach spoke out Tuesday against the “nuclear option” of imposing a complete ban on Russian athletes for the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, prompting a debate that laid much of the blame for the scandal on the World Anti-Doping Agency.
The McLaren Report recommended a blanket ban for Russian athletes for Rio 2016 but the IOC decided on July 24 that the worldwide federations should rule on their eligibility in their sports and has since set up an independent panel to give a final decision.
Bach again pointed blame at the World Anti-Doping Agency for failing to act sooner on evidence of state-backed doping in Russian Federation, and said it would be wrong to make individual athletes “collateral damage” for the wrongdoing of their government.
“If we can achieve this, then the fight against doping will have some kind of final effect”, he said.
“Whoever responds to a violation of the law with another violation of the law is destroying justice”, Bach said at the opening ceremony of the 129th International Olympic Committee session in Rio de Janeiro on Monday.
Armitstead, one of the favorites for the women’s road race, missed three doping tests in a 12-month period, leading to a charge by U.K. Anti-Doping and a provisional suspension.
As a result, the committee asked the federations that govern each Olympic sport to decide who should be allowed to go, and their recommendations are now being reviewed by the Olympic committee only days before the games.
Bach took a shot at WADA, which was set up by the International Olympic Committee in 1999, for not having acted earlier on whistleblower evidence of widespread doping in Russian Federation.
Just days ahead of the Olympic Games the waterways of Rio de Janeiro are as filthy as ever, contaminated with raw human sewage teeming with unsafe viruses and bacteria, according to a 16-month-long study commissioned by. “The IOC is not responsible for the fact that different information which was offered to WADA already a couple of years ago was not followed up”.
Pound’s report, which was released in November 2015, detailed widespread cheating in track and field and led the IAAF to ban Russia’s entire team.
Underling the deep split between Olympic leaders and anti-doping officials, Bach said it was WADA – not the IOC – that was responsible for doping problems in Russian Federation. “The IOC is not responsible for the timing of the McLaren report”.
Stepanov, whose wife, the runner Yulia Stepanova, has been excluded from the Games over drugs, told the French sports newspaper L’Equipe that the International Olympic Committee “does not want whistleblowers. does not want people who tell the truth”.
Rio has faced criticism for shoddy construction since April, when a bike path that was hailed as a top legacy project of the Olympics collapsed, killing two people.
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The chief spokesman for the Rio Olympics says, “I can guarantee in the name of Rio 2016 that the athletes can compete in safety”.
