Following an independent report that confirmed the existence of a state-supported Russian doping program at the Sochi Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has made a decision to allow Russian athletes to take part in the 2016 Rio games, albeit with stringent testing measures.
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Stepanova had previously hoped to compete in the games under a neutral flag.
Earlier interim International Olympic Committee measures announced Tuesday included urging winter sports federations to move their competitions out of Russia this season, in response to allegations that Russian state officials hid hundreds of failed drug tests over several years and swapped samples from doped athletes for clean ones during the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
“The decision was taken in my absence and in the absence of Craig Reedie because he was the other party to the dispute as WADA wanted a blanket ban of Russian sports at the Rio Olympics”, he said.
Russian sport has been engulfed in crisis with calls for an all-encompassing ban growing louder following the publication of the McLaren report, a World Anti-Doping Agency-led investigation which supported claims of widespread “state-sponsored doping”.
“The seven Russian tennis players who have been nominated to compete in Rio have been subject to a rigorous anti-doping testing programme outside Russia”.
Sean Ingle’s report to follow soon … About “80 percent” of the Russian team regularly undergoes global testing of the kind specified by the IOC, he said.
The Rio 2016 Olympic Games take place on August 5 to August 21, which is now less than two weeks away from the opening ceremonies.
Russian Minister of Sports Vitaly Mutko said that they were thankful to the International Olympic Committee for its decision not to impose a blanket ban on Russia for the Olympics.
According to him, both ROC and Moscow are ready to cooperate with both the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the IOC committees in order to investigate allegations of doping among Russian athletes.
The IOC have agreed with that argument today, putting “individual justice” at the centre of their decision.
The IOC had said this week that it would not organise or give patronage to any sports event in Russia and that no member of the Russian Sports Ministry implicated in the McLaren report would be accredited for Rio.
But the Olympic leaders said “each affected athlete must be given the opportunity to rebut the applicability of collective responsibility in his or her individual case”.
Meeting those conditions alone won’t be enough though, as it also must stand up to the scrutiny of a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) expert.
The Russian Sports Minister says that “the majority” of Russia’s team complies with International Olympic Committee criteria on doping and will be able to compete in Rio. “I am sure that the whole team that we’ve named will compete at Rio”.
The IOC has said it would seek a balance between “collective punishment” and “individual justice”.
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But Bach, a trained lawyer, has perhaps created more uncertainty with the decision to block Russian Federation from proposing any athlete who has served a ban before.
