IOC has several options as decision on Russian doping ban is expected
Anyone looking for a measure of clarity about whether Russians will compete in the Rio Olympics can find that in only one place for now — in who thinks they should be there or not.
Whether the country’s entire delegation will be banned, well, that’s an answer for the International Olympic Committee to provide on Sunday, and many only have guesses how that decision could go.
The IOC will meet to decide Russia’s participation in the Olympics, which begin on Aug. 5. It does so after a week which included the release on another damning report revealing state-sponsored doping in the country and a decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) that upheld a ban of Russia’s track and field athletes by the International Association of Athletics Federations.
The World Anti-Doping Agency, more than a dozen leaders of National Anti-Doping Organizations and numerous athletes have called on the IOC to ban Russia. Leaders there have described such calls as politically motivated. And former Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev has written to the IOC to argue against collective punishment that could harm athletes who have not violated anti-doping rules.
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“What the IOC is going to do with it is hard to tell,” said Dick Pound, a former WADA president and a Canadian lawyer who led the first investigation into Russian doping. “They’ve been very, very reluctant to even sound like they would do something that would ban Russians generally from the Games. They’ve got a unanimous recommendation from WADA, which is the organization that’s set up in the first place to monitor compliance. They’ve now got a decision from CAS that says the suspension of the Russian Federation and therefore its athletes is fine. So it’s pretty clear that the IOC has the power to do whatever is necessary if it wishes to do so.”
The IOC finds itself in this position after three reports commissioned by WADA revealed a system of doping and cover-ups in the country. Pound’s independent commission report, which was first released in November, showed widespread doping in Russian athletics and resulted in the IAAF provisionally banning the country’s athletes from international competition.
A second report from Pound in January revealed bribery and the covering up of positive drug tests from Russian athletes that included top IAAF officials.
On Monday, Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren released the results of another WADA-commissioned investigation that confirmed allegations of doping and swapping out urine samples at the Sochi Olympics. It also revealed a system in which officials from the Ministry of Sport, Center of Sports Preparation of the National Teams of Russia, the Federal Security Service and the Moscow and Sochi labs covered up more than 600 positive tests of Russian athletes in 29 Olympic sports from 2011 until August 2015.
On Thursday, CAS upheld the ban the IAAF extended last month that will keep Russian athletes out of the Games. The IOC has said it supports that ban.
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In response to McLaren’s report, the IOC said it would review legal options of a collective ban of all Russian athletes. The IOC has said it is seeking to balance collective responsibility and individual justice.
In statement, IOC president Thomas Bach said the IOC “will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available” against individuals and organizations implicated in the report.
Several options for IOC
What that looks like remains anyone’s guess, but a few seem to be on the table.
The first, and probably least likely, is to do nothing. The IOC is reviewing the McLaren report, but its conclusions point to Russia subverting the anti-doping system to allow its athletes to cheat at the Sochi Olympics.
For months, anti-doping leaders and athletes have called for a ban and those only intensified this week. To many, the decision is seen as a referendum on whether the IOC has the zero-tolerance approach to doping that Bach has professed it does.
Another route the IOC could pursue would be to delegate deciding the eligibility of Russian athletes to their international sport federations (IFs).
That could set up a system similar to what the IAAF passed last month. In extending its ban of Russia, the federation created a rule change allowing athletes to seek exceptional eligibility by demonstrating that they had been subject to an effective anti-doping system outside of Russia and that they had not been tainted by the Russian system.
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The IAAF said then that it expected few would meet that criteria. Of the 136 applications it has received, the IAAF’s doping review board has approved just two — that of whistleblower and 800-meter runner Yuliya Stepanova and of long jumper Darya Klishina, who trains in Florida.
“I don’t think the IOC is going to ban Russia,” said David Larkin, an international sports attorney. “I think they’re going to push it to the IFs. I think the IFs are going to inconsistently apply the standards, but that’s the best you can do now.”
The goal of any system like that would be to attempt to preserve the rights of clean Russian athletes, but it’s not without problems.
In announcing its decision, CAS noted its concern with the IAAF’s rule because it was based on long-term prior activity and left athletes no chance to comply with the rule in time for the Games. The IOC’s decision comes less than two weeks until the Games open in Rio, leaving athletes in sports that were not implicated until this week virtually no chance to establish that kind of anti-doping record.
“That’s a two-edged sword for the international federation” said Patrice Brunet, an international sports lawyer and CAS arbitrator. “If they don’t do their work properly and recommend all Russian athletes, it lies on the head of the international federation if they don’t do that work appropriately. And the IOC may have that decision reviewed afterward.”
Should the IOC take the approach of delegating responsibility to the IFs, it also leaves open the possibility of inconsistent standards. To Larkin, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
Gymnastics, for instance, was not implicated in the tally of covered-up tests in the McLaren report. And Bruno Grandi, the head of the International Federation of Gymnastics, has said he opposes a blanket ban.
In weightlifting, however, Russia is on the verge of having its team banned by the International Weightlifting Federation because of its number of positive retests from the Beijing and London Games.
System fails to address state-sponsored doping
“Basically, the Olympics are the IOC’s events. They make up the rules. They issue the invitations. I think they have the power in circumstances like this where you’re talking about government intervention,” Pound said. “Getting tied up in a knot over that issue I think is kind of a red herring.
“If you’re going to push it all of the international federations to determine the Olympic eligibility, what do you need the IOC for?”
'Everything is possible'
Another option would be for the IOC to suspend the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) and set up its own process to examine eligibility of athletes.
The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency was one of 14 NADOs who signed onto a letter this week imploring Bach and the IOC to do just that, arguing the IOC has that power in its charters because ROC officials were implicated in the McLaren report as participating in the cover-up of positive drug tests.
Taking this approach would allow for a consistent process of reviewing the anti-doping status of Russian athletes along with an IOC providing anti-doping expertise that some federations might not be able to.
“Due process is an important principle, and hopefully these will be respected in light of the extreme urgency that we’re facing here with the Olympic Games just two weeks away,” said Brunet. “There is no perfect system, but at the same time the IOC has a fiduciary duty — and so does the IAAF, for example — to ensure that the sport is preserved. The interests of the sport have to be balanced with the interests of each individual athlete who claims to have the right to be at the start line.”
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A ban of a National Olympic Committee is not without precedent, at least in part.
Germany and Japan were not invited to the Games following the World Wars. South Africa saw its invitation rescinded for the 1964 Olympics after failing to denounce apartheid.
And last year, the IOC suspended Kuwait after accusing its government of interfering with its NOC.
Should the IOC take this approach and ban the Russians from competing in Rio, it would be a first for subverting anti-doping rules.
Whatever the IOC decides, more challenges to CAS could come. The court handled the challenge of the IAAF case on an expedited basis, and it is available at each Olympics to issue decisions within hours, if needed.
For now, it’s clear who thinks Russians should compete in Rio and who doesn’t. The IOC will have the final say on Sunday, and what the decision ends up being is anyone’s guess.
“It’s their Games. They can do whatever they like,” said Dr. Gregory Ioannidis, a sports lawyer and anti-doping expert in the United Kingdom. “That’s the problem. These are questions that only the IOC can answer. Everything is possible.”