Only days into the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, committee president Philip Craven has announced Russian Federation is not allowed to compete in the Paralympic Games, starting on September 7.
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As in the courtroom, where witness testimony is often said to have “the ring of truth”, what Craven said last weekend has the ring of right, if you like. “The IPC has made a decision to suspend Russian Federation. favouring collective responsibility over individual justice”.
IPC president Phil Craven on Sunday blasted Russian Federation for failing the Paralympic movement.
It began with the Russian doping scandal and the choice to permit some Russian athletes to nonetheless compete within the Rio Olympics, a choice that did not sit properly with different Olympians (although Russia’s whole Paralympic Video games squad has been banned).
“Over the period of more than three years, either 35 or 20 doping samples have been found but they have disappeared and the names [of Para-athletes] are not given”.
The IPC has so far identified 11 of the 27 remaining samples as tampered, meaning that an athlete flagged for a positive test would have escaped punishment.
In an interview with The Associated Press, IOC President Thomas Bach said Monday that he will make a third attempt to push through an OIympic ban on any athlete who has received a serious drug sanction.
“The overwhelming majority of sportspeople who were prevented from taking part in the Games were absolutely clean sportspeople”, said Lukin, saying he was ready to provide evidence that the Russian team had run a tight anti-doping programme.
In the end, the Russians – and they had a full hearing – couldn’t convince the council they could live up to their IPC anti-doping obligations. “The anti-doping system in Russian Federation is broken, corrupted and entirely compromised”. Everything we have observed goes against the very spirit of sport and everything the Paralympic movement stands for. To many, this decision seemed like International Olympic Committee was simply passing the buck to its member organizations.
“It was the first time you’d seen this kind of attention given to the rights and dreams of Russian Paralympic athletes, and now of course that’s all being put under a microscope internationally”.
And it was a unanimous verdict made by a group of 15, including two Canadians, which counts among its members no few than six former Paralympians.
The Russians have promised to appeal to the Court of Arbitration of Sport, and fair enough – that’s why there are avenues of appeal, to protect against miscarriages of justice.
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“The Russian sport system and government have betrayed clean athletes in Russia and around the world”. “But mostly it is the same as the Olympics – things like asthma and diabetes”. They have done what is necessary to do that.
