IOC leaders stop short of complete ban on Russians from Rio

ESPN reports the World Anti-Doping Agency’s suggestion came after allegations of rampant state-sponsored cheating by the Russians.

Any Russian athlete who has ever served a suspension for a doping infraction will be banned even if that suspension has been completed, the International Olympic Committee said.

Lead WADA investigator Richard McLaren said evidence showed a Moscow laboratory “operated for the protection of doped Russian athletes, within a state dictated failsafe system”.

The decision was welcomed by Russian athletes and authorities.

“An athlete should not suffer and should not be sanctioned for a system in which he was not implicated”, Mr Bach said.

The IOC said the call was a “preliminary decision” that had to made because of the urgency created by of the impending games and the fact that athlete’s entry process has already begun.

Bach admitted that “this is a very ambitious timeline” but added that the International Olympic Committee had “no choice”.

The IOC has also rejected the bid by Russian whistleblower Yulia Stepanova to compete as a neutral athlete in Rio.

The IOC invited Stepanova to Rio and said they will support her with training and help to find her a new country to compete for in the future.

It also confirmed professor Richard McLaren would continue his investigative work into doping and “identify athletes that might have benefited from manipulation of the doping control process to hide positive doping tests”.

Russia’s sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, later told the R-Sport TV news agency that the International Olympic Committee judgment was an “objective” one.

Travis Tygart says the decision and the confusing mess left in its wake is a significant blow to the rights of clean athletes.

“It seems to me as if they are nearly passing the buck on to the individual sport’s federations”.

OLYMPIC leaders have stopped short of imposing a complete ban on Russia from the Rio de Janeiro Games, assigning individual global sports federations the responsibility to decide which athletes should be cleared to compete.

That suspension was introduced in response to a previous independent WADA report on doping past year.

“Their bans remain in force”.

The report produced by Canadian law professor Richard McLaren described extensive doping and cover-ups across a series of summer and winter Olympic sports and particularly at the Sochi Winter Olympics hosted by Russian Federation in 2014.

The IP report released by WADA on Monday confirmed previous allegations Russian Federation was running an organized doping regime. Two years before at the London Summer Games, Russian athletes won 79 medals, of which 22 were gold.

The Russian athletics squad is now suspended after claims of a state-sponsored doping programme. The report implicated Russia’s anti-doping organization, ministry of sport, and secret service, and detailed how Russian Federation manipulated its athlete’s urine samples across “virtually all sports”.

The IOC executive committee decided not to ban the Russian team.