The IOC and the World Anti-Doping Agency clashed again Tuesday over the allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation that have rattled the Olympic movement and created chaos ahead of Friday’s opening ceremony in Rio.
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The IOC President urged IOC members to unite behind an effort to further strengthen efforts to protect clean athletes.
Bach’s forthright condemnation of WADA escalates the public feud between the Olympics and anti-doping bodies which has broken out in the final days before the Rio Games.
“WADA wishes to factually clarify that the agency acted immediately on allegations concerning Russian Federation when it had corroborated evidence and the power to do so under the World Anti-Doping Code”, it said.
Bach said it would be wrong to make individual Russian athletes “collateral damage” for the wrongdoing of their government.
WADA and Bach have been at odds since the agency publicly recommended that the IOC impose a total ban on Russia’s Olympic team following McLaren’s report detailing state-directed doping across more than two dozen winter and summer sports.
Back couldn’t face the hardest act, telling International Olympic Committee delegates: “The result is death and devastation”.
No country as a whole has ever been barred from the games for doping, and Russian Federation is a major force in the Olympic movement as well as a sports powerhouse.
“If proven true, such a contemptuous system of doping is an unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games”, Bach said.
“What is therefore not acceptable is the insinuation by some proponents of this “nuclear option” that anyone who does not share their opinion is not fighting against doping”.
“The IOC is very much about protecting clean athletes” individual rights and I’m very pleased they supported us’. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month rejected Russia’s appeal against a ban for its athletics team from Rio.
“We can not deprive an athlete of the human right to be given the opportunity to prove his or her innocence”.
But in another veiled criticism of WADA, IOC President Thomas Bach said: “Given our remit, it is not the IOC that is responsible for the accreditation and supervision of anti-doping laboratories”.
A blanket ban would have been sending out the severest message that doping will not be tolerated yet the International Olympic Committee have probably concluded that the political fall-out is not worth it, but have merely shown themselves to lack authority when hard evidence was placed in front of them. The IOC has no authority over the testing program of athletes outside the Olympic Games.
Israeli member Alex Gilady echoed that feeling.
“I think it’s not the reputation of the International Olympic Committee that has to be restored, it’s the reputation of WADA”, said Israeli member Alex Gilady.
Argentine member Gerardo Werthein also laid into WADA, saying “the failure to investigate serious and credible allegations more swiftly has left the sports movement.in a very hard position facing incredibly hard decisions in an impossible timeframe”.
“It saddens me to say this, but at times WADA has seemed to be more interested in publicity and self-promotion rather than doing its job as a regulator”, Werthein said.
WADA chief Craig Reedie was grilled at the International Olympic Committee session for what members said was a failure to act on information from whistleblowers of widespread doping in Russian Federation until it became public through the media past year.
“We have started our own rethinking”, Reedie said, a process that not only looks at the doping issues itself but also “reviewing WADA governance structures”.
The allegations of doping stem from claims by a Russian doctor and other officials over the past 18 months that Moscow has operated a structured and strategic doping program meant to give athletes an advantage in competition at global events.
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Russian has been at the centre of a new doping storm after an independent investigator, Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, said in a report that there had been widespread state-backed doping in Russia.
