July 24 – The IOC decides against banning all Russian athletes from the Olympics, leaving the decision to the global federations under strict criteria that are laid down by the IOC.
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A key among them is the controversy surrounding Russian Federation, after a report from the World Anti Doping Agency accused the country of state sponsored drug cheating.
On the eve of the Olympics, the IOC President Thomas Bach has answered his critics and promised that “cheaters have nowhere to hide”.
Bach and fellow Olympic executives rejected that option, which he defended this week by saying he wanted to avoid the “death and devastation” it would have produced.
Responding to the widespread criticism of the International Olympic Committee as being “soft” on the Russians, Bach called “not acceptable” the “insinuation by some proponents of this “nuclear option” that anyone who does not share their opinion is not fighting against doping”. In a show of hands, only one of the 85 members – Great Britain’s Adam Pengilly, a former Olympic skeleton racer – voted against Bach’s stance.
“I believe it’s very unfair that such athletes like Yelena Isinbayeva and Sergei Shubenkov, without any doping history, absolutely clean, can not participate in the Olympics, however many athletes including American runners like for example (Justin) Gatlin and Tyson (Gay), who were punished for doping many times, will take part in these Olympics”, he said.
“They said they didn’t know what to do with this”, Israeli member Alex Giladi said.
According to Robertson, it was this stalling that has allowed some Russian athletes to still compete in the Rio Olympics despite concerns that the doping scheme went beyond the track and field team.
On July 30, the International Olympic Committee also created a panelthathas the final decision on whether individual Russian athletes will be banned from competing in Rio.
The International Weightlifting Federation excluded all eight Russians entered for Rio last week and the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled the ban had been properly applied. “This is not what the Olympic movement stands for”.
FEI President Ingmar De Vos says: “This has been a very hard time for our Russian athletes, who all have clean anti-doping records under both human and equine testing regimes, so we are very happy to have confirmation today from the International Olympic Committee that all five are now declared eligible to compete”.
“We had to follow the rules of justice and justice has to be independent from politics”, Bach said. “The final will be in the report (by the IOC)”.
“We have a doping problem”, the U.S. Olympic Committee chairman said.
“The IOC Decision deprives the Russian athletes of the presumption of innocence and rather establishes a presumption of guilt”, CAS said in a news release. However, it also shines some light on the purported ineffectiveness of WADA and why so many issues with doping have gone relatively unaddressed or have been been met with less-than-appropriate punishment.
Unconfirmed reports on social media even said the diplomat had used jiu-jitsu to disarm the robber.
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The report by The Indianapolis Star found several instances in which USA Gymnastics, the sport’s governing body in the US that counts more than 3,000 gyms and 110,000 among its members, filed complaints away citing a policy in which it would contact authorities only when the complaint came directly from a victim or a victim’s parents.
