Rio Olympics: Anti-Doping Officials To Request Complete Ban Of Russia
The Rio Olympics has churned out yet another controversial dilemma ahead of its August inauguration. Anti-doping officials and agencies from the U.S, Canada, and 10 other countries are reportedly expected to demand that Russia be prohibited from participating in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
In the light of a widespread doping cover-up, the ban on Russia will call for a purge of athletes who have taken performance enhancing drugs as part of the state-sponsored doping system that Russia employed ahead of the Rio Olympics.
Russia’s track and field team has already been banned from the Rio Olympics, an event which perhaps took place for the very first time in Olympics history.
Reuters reports that the source of the knowledge in the anti-doping officials’ call to ban Russia for the Rio Olympics is a letter addressed to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
The draft, which was leaked and will be forwarded once the report on the Sochi Winter Olympics doping fiasco is presented on Monday, will call for a ban on all Russian athletes, not just those who would have competed in the track and field events.
While United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart and Canadian Centre for Ethics in Sports CEO Paul Melia are the ones to sign the letter, they are backed by several national anti-doping agencies, including those in Spain, Germany, Japan, and Switzerland.
The Daily Mail quoted a section from the letter.
“We write on behalf of a community of clean athletes and anti-doping organizations with faith that the IOC can lead the way forward by upholding the principles of Olympics. Therefore, consistent with the Principles, Charter and Code we request that the IOC Executive Board take the action to suspend the Russian Olympic and Paralympic Committee from participating in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.”
Russian athletes Kristina Khoroshova, Anastasia Polishchuk, and Kristina Sivkova, in the above AP photograph, were among those who competed in the national track and field championships at a stadium in Russia in June.
These championships were supposed to offer Russian athletes with berths to the Rio Olympics, but with the track and field team now banned from the Rio games, excitement for the tournament “has been replaced by despair and defiance.”
According to the New York Daily News, however, the draft that calls for the ban of the entire Russian contingent from this year’s games makes an exception for those Russia-born athletes who can conclusively prove that they were subject to strong anti-doping systems in other countries ahead of the Rio Olympics.
Yulia Stepanova, an athlete who left Russia in 2014 and pulled back the curtain on doping, will be allowed to compete.
The email calling for the ban, which was also reviewed and reported exhaustively on by the New York Times, reflects the words of Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, who spoke to the newspaper about allegedly acting under the Russian government’s orders to medically fudge the fact that there was use of performance-enhancing drugs at the Winter Olympics in 2014.
For the very first time, the Rio Olympics may take place without the participation of the country that at one time gave us athletes like Maria Sharapova, who is holding the Russian national flag at the inaugural ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics in the topmost image, but is herself banned from the sport of tennis for two years after a doping allegation.
[Photo by Lars Baron/Getty Images]
