Relief: Russia will go to Rio after all

IOC decides against imposing blanket doping ban on Russian athletes

LAUSANNE: The International Olympic Committee (IOC) yesterday ordered individual sports federations to decide whether Russian competitors should take part in the Rio Games after failing to agree on a complete ban over Russia’s state-run doping.

The IOC executive committee decided that any Russian athlete wanting to go to Rio, where the Games start on August 5, will have to prove that he or she was not involved in the doping which an independent investigator said was organised by the sports ministry and Russian secret service.

An IOC ethics commission also ruled that 800m runner Yuliya Stepanova, who turned whistleblower on doping in Russian athletics, could not go to Rio even as a neutral.



“We have set the bar to the limit,” said IOC president Thomas Bach after the meeting in defending the action against the worst doping scandal in the Olympic movement’s history.

The IOC had faced widespread pressure for tough action against Russia, which denied any state role in the doping. But many IOC members were said to be reluctant to ban a country completely for the first time over doping.

“Under these exceptional circumstances, Russian athletes in any of the 28 Olympic summer sports have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions,” said the IOC. It insisted that “the ‘presumption of innocence’ cannot be applied to them”.



But the Olympic leaders said “each affected athlete must be given the opportunity to rebut the applicability of collective responsibility in his or her individual case”.

The IOC said Russian athletes will have to satisfy the 28 federations who run the summer Olympic sports that they are clean.

‘Russia grateful to IOC for Rio ruling’

Russia hailed an ‘objective’ decision by the International Olympic Committee not to ban its entire team.



“It was objective and taken in the interests of world sport and the unity of the Olympic family. We are grateful to the IOC for such a decision,” sports minister Vitaly Mutko told R-Sport news agency.

He added later in televised comments that he was convinced that the ‘majority’ of the Russian team would meet strict criteria to compete.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2016.

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