The recently formed IOC Independent Panel is having a final say on the participation of particular Russian athletes in the Olympics, which kick off with promises of a spectacular opening ceremony in Rio de Janeiro Friday night.
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The IOC asked global sports federations to decide which Russian athletes could be free to compete in Rio, following a report by a World Anti-Doping Agency investigator that detailed evidence of state-sponsored doping in Russia.
The issue has dominated the build-up to the Rio Games in the wake of Professor Richard McLaren’s damning Wada-commissioned report into systemic state-sponsored doping across the majority of Olympic sports.
This supports an earlier Cas decision – known as the Osaka rule – which established athletes could not be punished twice for the same doping offence.
Russia’s track and field team remains barred following an earlier decision by the sport’s governing body, IAAF.
“For clean athletes, I think the situation in Rio is tough to watch”, said Travis Tygart, head of the United States Anti-Doping Agency.
“With this respect to individual justice we can also send a very clear message to the clean athletes and in particular to the clean athletes in Russian Federation”. The commission will start its work after the Games in Rio.
All Russian athletes competing in archery, badminton, boxing, diving, equestrian, fencing, golf, gymnastics, handball, judo, modern pentathlon, shooting, synchronized swimming, table tennis, taekwondo, tennis, triathlon, volleyball, and water polo have been cleared by the International Olympic Committee and will compete.
“The hard question we had to answer”, Bach said Thursday, “was, Can you hold an individual responsible for the wrongdoing of his or her country?”
“Athletes such as Yelena Isinbayeva. are absolutely clean”, he said. Russian Federation also faced the possibility of its entire Olympic team being suspended, though the International Olympic Committee decided against such a ban. At least one sport, boxing, has a full slate of Russian participants.
Stepanova, who served a two-year ban for blood passport abnormalities in 2013, was not included in Russia’s team but had hoped to be invited to the Games by the International Olympic Committee to compete under a neutral flag.
Thre IOC lauded her engagement but denied her entry as a neutral athlete because “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”.
The arbitration court’s ruling frees four-times breaststroke world champion Yulia Efimova as well as rowers Anastasia Karabelshikova and Ivan Podshivalov to join the games. And this messge is: you can be successful outside such a system. Officials made a decision to reverse basic principles of presuming athletes innocent until proven guilty.
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The rulings raise new concerns over the validity of the IOC’s rejection of allowing the Russian whistle-blower Yuliya Stepanova to participate in Rio.
