The International
Olympic Committee (IOC) will leave it up to individual sports governing bodies
to decide if Russian competitors are clean and should be allowed to take part.
The decision follows
a report in which a Canadian law professor Richard Mclaren said Russia operated
a state-sponsored doping programme from 2011 to 2015.
Competitors from
Russia who want to take part in the Games will have to meet strict criteria
laid down by the IOC. Any Russian who has served a doping ban will not be
eligible for next month’s Olympics. Track and field athletes have
already been banned.
IOC President Thomas
Bach said: We have set the bar to the limit by establishing a number of very
strict criteria which every Russian athlete will have to fulfill if he or she
wants to participate in the Olympic Games Rio 2016.” “I think in this way, we
have balanced on the one hand, the desire and need for collective
responsibility versus the right to individual justice of every individual
athlete,” he further added.
The decision not to
impose a blanket ban came after a three-hour meeting of the IOC’s executive
board, and reaction came quickly. Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko
described the decision as “objective” but “very tough”, while the United States
Anti-Doping Agency (Usada) claimed the IOC had “refused to take decisive
leadership”.
Russia’s full Olympic
team would consist of 387 competitors. The International Association of
Athletics Federations (IAAF) has already ruled that Russian track and field
athletes will not compete at the Games, a decision which was upheld on Thursday
by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
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