RIO DE JANEIRO A blanket ban on Russian Federation at the Rio de Janeiro Games would have had devastating consequences, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said on Tuesday.
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The Russian Olympic Committee had submitted an original entry list of 389 athletes but that has been significantly reduced by 118 after global federations were asked, by the IOC, to individually assess the anti-doping record of each Russian athlete.
The IOC asked worldwide sports federations to decide which Russian athletes should be cleared to compete after a review of their doping records.
Bach said it would be wrong to make individual Russian athletes “collateral damage” for the wrongdoing of their government.
“The result is death and devastation”, he said at the morning session.
Bach also reiterated that the Olympic Movement must engage with youth to stay relevant, highlighting the importance of digital content – including an IOC visit to Silicon Valley – which will also feature prominently in an Olympic News Channel to go on air immediately after the Games.
“If Russian athletes already in Rio. are forced to leave then that will be a real tragedy”.
THOMAS BACH, IOC president, slamming critics who claim that the body is not coming down hard enough on drug cheats.
More measures will follow after the Olympics, once the report, commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency, is completed by law professor Richard McLaren.
“We may disagree how we get there but we all work toward the same goal of protecting clean athletes. Despite these discrepancies we agree we must not allow such a situation to happen again”, he added.
But even as the final preparations were being made, further controversy threatened to overshadow the Brazilian bonanza as reports emerged of a Russian diplomatic official being involved in a fatal shooting.
Bach said the International Olympic Committee wants to “shed full light on all the allegations” in McLaren’s report, including evidence that Russian officials replaced tainted urine samples with clean ones during the 2104 Winter Games in Sochi.
Speaking Tuesday, Bach called for a complete overhaul of the anti-doping system.
The nine men cleared to compete are Vasily Egorov (-49kg), Misha Aloian (-52kg), Vladimir Nikitin (-56kg), Adlan Abdurashidov (-60kg), Vitaly Dunaytsev (-64kg), Andrey Zamkovoy (-69kg), Artem Chebotarev (-75kg), Petr Khamukov (-81kg) and Evgeny Tishchenko (-91kg).
WADA, however, rejected Bach’s blame.
A few members did question the International Olympic Committee decision to keep Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova – an 800-meter runner who helped expose systematic doping in her homeland – out of the games.
The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) said they took timely investigation into Russian Federation doping once they had concrete evidence, pushing aside criticism from International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach.
Reedie has accepted that the report was “destabilising” to sports but insisted that Wada had acted as quickly as possible – it was only in May that the disclosures of organised cover-ups at the Sochi Winter Olympics were made public.
“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, who is also an International Olympic Committee vice president, said in a statement Monday.
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The Rio Games August 5-21 take place in a deep political and economic crisis in Brazil which led to construction delays and financial constraints in the build-up.
