The decision was announced after a three-hour meeting of the IOC's 15-member executive board on Sunday, less than two weeks before the Opening Ceremonies for the Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Aug. 5.
As of early Sunday afternoon, United World Wrestling -- the international federation governing amateur wrestling -- had not announced any decision pertaining to wrestlers from Russia competing at the Olympics.
The IOC said United World Wrestling and other federations would have to apply their own rules if they want to ban an entire Russian team from their events in Rio, as the IAAF -- the International Association of Athletics Federations -- has already done for track and field ... a decision upheld by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) on Thursday.
The IOC said that federations "should carry out an individual analysis of each athlete's anti-doping record, taking in account only reliable adequate international tests ... in order to ensure a level playing field."
While deciding against an outright ban of all Russian athletes, the IOC said it was imposing tough eligibility conditions, including barring any Russian athlete from competing in the Rio Games who has ever been sanctioned for doping.
The IOC said it would accept the entry only of those Russian athletes who meet certain conditions set out for the 28 international federations to apply.
Russian entries must be examined and upheld by an expert from the CAS, the IOC said.
Russian athletes who are cleared for the games will be subjected to a "rigorous additional out-of-competition testing program."
"We had to balance the collective responsibility and the individual justice to which every human being and athlete is entitled to," IOC President Thomas Bach said.
"An athlete should not suffer and should not be sanctioned for a system in which he was not implicated," Bach told reporters on a conference call after Sunday's meeting.
Bach acknowledged the decision "might not please everybody."
"This is not about expectations," he said. "This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world."
Demands for an outright ban on all Russian athletes from the 2016 Olympics intensified last week after Richard McLaren, a Canadian lawyer commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), issued a report accusing Russia's sports ministry of overseeing a vast doping program of its Olympic athletes.
Anti-doping leaders had argued that the extent of state-backed doping in Russia had tainted the country's entire sports system, and the only way to ensure a level playing field was to bar the whole team, even if some innocent athletes will lose out.
However, there were strong concerns about a complete ban on all Russian athletes going beyond potential issues of fairness to individual athletes who may be innocent of actual doping. For starters, in the more than a century of the Modern Olympics, never has an individual nation's athletes been kicked out of the Olympics for doping violations. Russia is a major force in the Olympic movement; many international Olympic officials and federation leaders have close ties to Russia. Many Russians within the Olympic movement -- along with officials within the Russian government -- have suggested talk of a proposed ban was nothing more than a political, Western-led campaign against their nation and its athletes.
Despite today's IOC announcement to punt the decision for banning Russian athletes from the Olympics to United World Wrestling and the other 27 athletic federations, Russia still faces a possible ban from the Paralympic Games. Citing evidence in McLaren's report of doping among Russian Paralympic athletes, the International Paralympic Committee said Friday it will decide next month whether to exclude the country from the Sept. 7-18 event in Rio.
Recommended Comments
There are no comments to display.
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now