Today, the International Olympic Committee said individual sports federations will be responsible for barring Russian athletes from this summer’s games in Rio.
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It follows a report commissioned by Wada and undertaken by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren which reaffirmed allegations that the Russian sports ministry oversaw an expansive doping programme, including the manipulation of urine samples at the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Australia’s government has questioned the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) leadership in the fight against doping in sport and said Russia’s participation at the Rio 2016 Games risks damaging the reputation of the Olympic movement.
The court, which is the highest arbitrator of worldwide sports issues, did not grant appeals to 68 Russian track and field athletes who had been banned earlier this year by the sport’s global federation from competing in this summer’s games.
“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”, Reedie added. While every Russian athlete won’t automatically be banned, each participant will undergo a strict vetting process, and Olympic federations have the authority to deny them from competing if they don’t pass muster.
Members of its executive board met in a conference call yesterday and granted wide-reaching powers to the 28 individual federations that govern each sport to rule on which Russian athletes would be permitted to compete in their respective disciplines.
Russian Olympic Committee president Alexander Zhukov presented his case to the IOC board at the beginning of Sunday’s meeting, promising full co-operation with investigations and guaranteeing “a complete and comprehensive restructuring of the Russian anti-doping system”.
The Russian Sports Minister says that “the majority” of Russia’s team complies with International Olympic Committee criteria on doping and will be able to compete in Rio. I hope our Russian national team – and they are training – will perform well at the Olympics. Stepanova’s testimony as a whistleblower featured heavily in the report, and it was on those grounds that she wanted neutral athlete status.
“Furthermore, the sanction to which she was subject and the circumstances in which she denounced the doping practices which she had used herself, do not satisfy the ethical requirements for an athlete to enter the Olympic Games”.
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Stepanova has previously failed a doping test.
