The court of arbitration for sport is set to announce a decision on Russian track and field athletes and the Olympics on Thursday. The Guardian reports on the events which preceded the trial.
Why are the Russians banned?
This goes back to last November when a 325-page report by Dick Pound, the former World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) president, uncovered a “deeply rooted culture of cheating” in Russian athletics that was state-sponsored. He also found Russian coaches were “out of control” and expected the Russian anti-doping agency, which itself was corrupt, to protect their athletes rather than catch them. Pound’s recommendation that Russia’s athletes should be banned from international competition was quickly approved by the IAAF, athletics’ governing body.
How did the court of arbitration get involved?
Last month in Vienna the IAAF upheld the ban on Russian athletes, which disqualified them from Rio. On the advice of outside lawyers, the IAAF left open a “crack in the door” for Russian athletes who could prove they had been training outside the country to compete under a neutral banner. Since then, the whistleblower Yulia Stepanova and the long jumper Darya Klishina, who trains in Miami, have been given permission to go to Rio. However every other Russian athlete who applied to the IAAF’s doping review board was rejected – hence their collective decision to appeal to Cas.
Do the Russians have a case to have the ban lifted?
The prominent sports lawyer Gregory Ioannidis, who has represented many athletes at Cas and is also a senior law professor at Sheffield Hallam university, says they do. “You can’t have a blanket ban 68 athletes just because you have a suspicion,” he said. “It doesn’t work like that. The taxman might think you or I are evading taxes but you need the evidence. And they have done everything asked of them by international sporting bodies.”
Ioannidis said Wada should reveal the names of the 139 Russian track and field athletes mentioned by McLaren – and then allow those whose samples were never tampered with to travel to Rio. He is supported by another lawyer, Marjolaine Viret, who said: “Collective responsibility is really questionable. If you say there is a presumption of innocence, its hard to undermine it on a legal basis.”
What is the IAAF’s position?
The IAAF argues no athlete who trains inside the Russian system can be trusted to be clean because of the weight of evidence of state interference in doping. Other problems included positive samples being switched or destroyed, athletes being forewarned of tests, doping control officers accepting bribes, and a deep-rooted culture of doping. This view is widely supported in the international sporting community. As the former head of the Australian Anti-Doping Agency Richard Ings puts it: “Athletes should be going to Rio only if they are part of a comprehensive, compliant anti-doping programme in the months before the competition. [It is] demonstrable that has not been the case in Russia. This is not a judgment call, this is one that should be made on the basis of hard facts.” He would like to see the IAAF’s position applied to all Russians hoping to compete at the Olympics.
Whatever happens the repercussions will be huge. If Russian track and field athletes are banned, it will increase the pressure on the International Olympic Committee to exclude the entire 387-strong Russian team from Rio. If the athletes are granted a reprieve from Cas, the possibility of a total ban ends.
Assuming the ban on track and field athletes is upheld, what next?
The IOC responded to McLaren’s findings by saying it needed more legal advice before deciding whether to ban Russia from Rio. It has since promised to make a decision in the next seven days. It could do this by referring to the Olympic charter. Article 4.5 warns national Olympic committees that, while they can work with governments, “they shall not associate themselves with any activity which would be in contradiction with the Olympic charter”. Article 4.6 states they “must preserve their autonomy and resist pressures of any kind which may prevent them from complying with the Olympic charter”. Russia fails on both counts.
Why?
According to McLaren, Yuri Nagornykh, the former Russian deputy minister of sport – who, crucially, was also a member of the Russian Olympic Committee – had the job of deciding whether every positive drugs test from the Moscow Laboratory from 2011 would be covered up or not. Not only was Nagornykh breaking anti-doping rules he was, as a member of the ROC, also violating the Olympic charter.
Does the IOC have an alternative to banning Russia?
It does. Many in sport believe the IOC will find a way to get some Russian athletes to Rio by delegating the decision to individual federations. There are suggestions that, while the International Weightlifting Federation is on the verge of confirming that Russia’s team will be banned from Rio, along with Belarus, Bulgaria and Kazakhstan, a sport like gymnastics might see a full complement of Russian athletes.
