IOC President Thomas Bach has defended the committee’s decision not to ban Russia’s entire Olympic team and says the country’s doping scandal will not damage the credibility of the Rio de Janeiro Games.
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Bach says the IOC “set a very high bar” by imposing strict criteria for worldwide sports federations to apply in deciding which individual Russian athletes should be cleared to compete at the Rio Games, which open on Friday.
Calls for a blanket ban grew after Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, who was commissioned to investigate by the World Anti-Doping Agency, issued a report accusing Russia’s sport ministry of orchestrating a vast doping scheme involving athletes in more than two dozen winter and summer sports.
The bid committee says the team will meet with International Olympic Committee leaders and sports federation officials.
Many anti-doping agencies, athletes and even senior International Olympic Committee member Dick Pound sharply criticized the decision, saying the International Olympic Committee lacked the leadership and courage to ban Russian Federation, hosts of the 2014 Sochi winter Games, outright.
Bach’s International Olympic Committee (IOC) stopped short of banning Russia from Rio and instead left decisions over Russian participation to individual sports federations, drawing criticism from some quarters.
The Olympic Games are set to begin in less than a week.
Among the four is Sarah Attar, who was the first woman from Saudi Arabia to compete in Olympic track and field in 2012.
“While it is destabilizing in the lead-up to the games, it is obvious, given the seriousness of the revelations that he (McLaren) uncovered, that they had to be published and acted upon without delay”, WADA President Craig Reedie said in a statement Monday. Rio de Janeiro would not be where it is today, without the Olympic Games as a catalyst.
The IOC won’t allow Russians to compete in Rio if they had previously been banned for doping, were implicated in the alleged cover-up or had not been tested often enough internationally.
“Throughout the last six years I’ve been drug tested by doping control agencies at my home and at the pool, at least once a month, and sometimes every other day”, he said in the letter published on his Facebook page.
A biology expert advised Rio de Janeiro travelers not to put their head underwater and that ingesting water could lead to “getting violently ill”. A new world of opportunities is opening up for us.
Ruggiero will join Anita DeFrantz on the 15-member board.
Los Angeles is competing against Paris, Rome and Budapest, Hungary.
“At this stage, I will not release any of the specific information I now have concerning any athletes”, he said.
Some of the worst pollution is in Rio’s Guanabara Bay, which will host the sailing competition.
The contamination is the result of Rio dumping untreated sewage into the bodies of water surrounding the city, something organizers had promised would be cleaned up by now.
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“It’s unfortunately just before the games”, Reedie told the AP. “The athletes will compete in safety”.
