Speaking at a news conference five days before the opening of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Bach said a total ban on Russian Federation for systematic doping “would not be justifiable” on either moral or legal grounds.
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Three swimmers and a wrestler have also made appeals to CAS over their bans.
This has led to the wave of cases at the CAS which has organised special hearings in Rio to deal with the appeals.
Instead, the committee left the decision in the hands of the 28 individual governing bodies of each sport.
Thomas Bach today sought to shovel blame for the shambles over Russian participation at the Rio 2016 squarely onto the shoulders of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).
Rejecting calls by more than a dozen anti-doping agencies for a complete ban on Russia, the International Olympic Committee left it to individual sports federations to vet which athletes could compete or not.
At least 117 of the 387 sportsmen and women that Russian Federation had wanted to send to Rio have been excluded.
President Thomas Bach holds press conference.
“This is for very obvious reasons”.
WADA said in a statement it was not possible to release the report of their investigator Richard McLaren earlier than July 18 because the key witness, former Moscow doping lab chief Grigory Rodchenkov, had not shared his information a year ago with another WADA commission.
On Thursday, the University of South California said it had suspended Russians Lobintsev and Vladimir Morozov from competing with its team. Doping in Russian athletics was exposed in a German television documentary in 2014.
Reedie said that “Rodchenkov was heard several times by the Pound Commission in 2015; and he never provided the information that he later revealed” to the American media.
Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren said Saturday, July 30, 2016, he is facing “a deluge of requests” to provide information on individual athletes implicated in his report on state-sponsored doping in Russian Federation.
According to the International Olympic Committee, there will be be 4,500 urine tests and 1,000 blood tests conducted during the August 5-21 Games.
The board also discussed Rio de Janeiro’s “Olympic legacy”, such as the new Metro line, the port’s revitalization and new highways built exclusively for buses, Bach said.
“I don’t think that this, in the end, will be damaging because people will realize we have to take this decision now”, Bach said.
Bach said he hopes the public will “realize we did our best to address the situation in a way which allows us to protect clean athletes all over the world”. “You can follow and you must follow your Olympic dream as a clean athlete”, Bach said.
Rather than prevent all Russian competitors from attending this month’s Games, it was left up to each worldwide sport federation to make a decision, a controversial move that IOC president Bach has again insisted was correct.
The IOC panel consists of Ugur Erdener, the IOC’s medical commission chairman, Claudia Bokel, head of the athletes commission and fellow IOC member Juan Antonio Samaranch Jr., vice president of the Modern Pentathlon federation.
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The IOC has drawn criticism from anti-doping authorities, athletes and the media for its handling of Russian Federation, which has been hit with repeated allegations of widespread, systemic doping.
