The International Olympic Committee’s decision to reject calls to ban all Russian competitors from the Rio Olympics could lead to “lesser protection for clean athletes”, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said on Sunday.
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FINA was the first global sports federation to ban any Russian athletes since the worldwide Olympic Committee’s controversial decision on Sunday to leave the issue of Russian eligibility up to each sport.
It also said it was analysing all anti-doping tests provided by the Russian rowers due to compete in Rio dating back to 2011, the full results of which would be known on Tuesday.
The World Anti-Doping Agency last week called for Russian Federation to be banned after detailing how Russia’s sports ministry had directed a massive cheating programme with help from the FSB state intelligence agency.
“In response to the most important moment for clean athletes and the integrity of the Olympic Games, the IOC has refused to take decisive leadership”, US Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart said in a statement.
Citing evidence in McLaren’s report of doping among Russian Paralympic athletes, the International Paralympic Committee said Friday it will decide next month whether to exclude the country from the September 7-18 event in Rio.
Russia’s entire track and field squad has already been barred from Rio following a similar WADA report on “state-supported” doping in that sport.
Under the measures, no Russian athletes who have ever had a doping violation will be allowed into the games, whether or not they have served a sanction, a rule that has not applied to athletes in other countries.
But others, including the global governing body for swimming FINA, opposed a blanket ban, as did countries such as Italy and others closer to Russian Federation.
“I think in this way, we have balanced on the one hand, the desire and need for collective responsibility versus the right to individual justice of every individual athlete”, IOC President Thomas Bach said on a conference call.
For Russia, the IOC’s compromise solution was probably the best they could have hoped for, especially after losing the appeal against the IAAF stance and Friday’s decision by the International Paralympic Committee to start the process of banning their team from the Paralympics in September. Zhukov said he didn’t agree with the latest International Olympic Committee ruling but that Russian Federation would not appeal it. Canadian ice-hockey Olympian Hayley Wickenheiser said the decision was a failure by the committee to “honor the world’s clean athletes”.
“This result is one which is respecting the rules of justice and all the clean athletes all over the world”, he said.
Russian entries must be examined and upheld by an expert from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the International Olympic Committee said.
It also rejected the application by Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova, the 800-metre runner and former doper who helped expose the doping scandal in her homeland, to compete under a neutral flag at the games.
First, athletes must be individually cleared by their respective sports federation and there should be no presumption of innocence.
Two-time pole vault Olympic champ and world record holder, Yelena Isinbayeva, who will still miss the Olympics together with the country’s track and field squad, said that IOC understood the scale of the mistake, which would’ve banning Russian Federation. Athletes who have previously served doping bans will not be eligible, while worldwide federations will also analyze an athlete’s testing history.
Calls for a complete ban on Russian Federation intensified after Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer commissioned by WADA, issued a report Monday accusing Russia’s sports ministry of overseeing a vast doping program of its Olympic athletes.
The one they did make keeps Russian Federation engaged in the Olympics – not an altogether surprising result, considering the country recently spent $51 billion on the Sochi Games, which have now been proven to be as drug-tainted and corrupt as any in history.
“This is a very ambitious timeline, but we had no choice”, Bach said.
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Maybe with those thousands of athletes who have tirelessly filled out “whereabouts” forms over the years, then allowed themselves to be woken in the dark of night, or met while out for dinner, by an agent tasked with collecting urine samples as part of the comprehensive out-of-competition-testing programs that exist in dozens of countries.
