A mere two weeks from its showcase event, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games, the International Olympic Committee is considering banning the entire Russian team after revelations the country's Ministry of Sport connived in systemic drug cheating at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Kicking the Russians out of Rio would serve notice that the IOC was serious about stamping out state-sponsored doping and about rehabilitating the tarnished Olympic movement. Oddly, however, the organisation gives every appearance of being conflicted as to whether to act or not.
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After the World Anti-Doping Agency published a report on Monday detailing evidence of heavy Russian government involvement in falsifying Sochi drug test results, IOC president Thomas Bach described it as a "shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sport and on the Olympic Games". Moreover, the IOC would "not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available".
However, Mr Bach said the IOC needed to "explore all the legal options" before deciding whether to implement a "collective ban" on all Russian competitors. And on Tuesday, the organisation said it would delay any possible blanket ban until after the Court of Arbitration for Sport considered overturning an existing ban on Russia's track and field athletes competing at Rio.
The IOC's equivocation is to be expected, and it's characteristic since while banning Russia would send a strong and positive message, there's every possibility it will elicit blowback sufficient perhaps to hit the IOC where it hurts, revenue streams and popularity. On Tuesday, Russian president Vladimir Putin dismissed the WADA report as "political", saying "the Olympic movement, which is playing a colossal uniting role for humankind, may once again be driven to the brink of a split".
While not denying the WADA charges, the Russian government characterised the allegations of high-level involvement as "impossible" and "absolutely unreal". Russian athletes were equally indignant, with world champion hurdler Sergey Shubenkov suggesting athletes be allowed to compete with the understanding that dopers would be detected and punished later, something he suggested WADA did " all the time".
That a blanket ban might deny clean Russian athletes a chance at Olympic glory is troubling. To argue, however, that all Russians should be allowed to compete denies the reality that cheating athletes frequently time their drug intake regime so as to be clean on competition day.
Doping and drug-taking has been rife in international sport for decades, propelled by the desire for personal (and national glory) and enabled by the weak and underfunded efforts of regulators to keep pace with sports scientists and chemists. And when the regulators did catch up, the athletes and their minders began switching or replacing drug samples.
During the Soviet era, Russia chased Olympic gold using any means necessary, and this state policy has been renewed with vigour by the intensely nationalistic Mr Putin. With that deception finally laid bare, the IOC has to ban Russia completely from Rio or face the risk of the Games becoming a farce.
