The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has instead ruled that each individual sports federation should determine whether Russian athletes are clean and eligible to compete.
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McLaren’s findings included that Russian Federation was tainting their athletes’ urine samples at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, and that their doping program had polluted a combined 28 sports from both the Winter and Summer Olympics between 2011-2015.
The International Olympic Committee cleared the way for scores of Russian athletes to be banned from the Rio Games, but stopped short of forcing the country’s entire delegation to stay home due to alleged state-sponsored doping.
It insisted that “the “presumption of innocence” can not be applied to them”.
The IOC also denied the bid of Russian track athlete Yulia Stepanova to compete in Rio as a “neutral athlete”.
“The McLaren Report exposed, beyond a reasonable doubt, a state-run doping programme in Russian Federation that seriously undermines the principles of clean sport embodied within the World Anti-Doping Code”.
The IAAF will not lift the ban on the Russian track and field team’s participation in the 2016 Olympics, its representative told TASS.
Any Russian athlete who had ever been sanctioned for doping would be allowed to compete, regardless of whether they had served out their sanction period.
Although, the IOC did lay down the criteria that must be met by athletes who want to compete in the Olympic Games, including, “an individual analysis of each athlete’s anti-doping record, taking into account only reliable adequate global tests”.
Coe, who is not now an IOC member, said on Twitter that the “IAAF team was ready to offer advice to any International Sports Federations given our experience and what we have learned over [sic] past 8 months”.
She added that “these issues must not be allowed to fade into the background at the conclusion of the Games”.
Asked how he would respond to critics accusing the IOC of treating Russian Federation too softly, Bach said: “read the decision”, stressing that the ROC was being treated more harshly than every other national Olympic committee. It was carried out under the direction of the country’s sports authorities to cover up doping.
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Russian entries must be examined and upheld by an expert from the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the International Olympic Committee said. The United States led a political boycott of the 1980 Moscow Games and the Soviet Union led an Eastern Bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later.
