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Sack IOC president Thomas Bach for double standards

IOC President Thomas Bach (Source: Wikipedia Commons)
Expert
25th July, 2016
24

If former head Jacques Rogge was still IOC president, Russia would be banned from the Rio Olympic Games for disgracing the movement.

But his replacement Thomas Bach has let Russia off the hook, despite the ongoing state-controlled doping of Russian competitors since 2011.

Yesterday Bach left the decision to the world governing bodies of 28 Olympic sports to decide if their Russian competitors are dope free for Rio. Tennis has already declared for Russia – allowing their athletes to compete.

Seeing the opening ceremony is just 12 days away, it’s a safe bet all Russian competitors, around 357 of them will be in Rio with the exception of track and field, where their governing body – the IAAF – banned them from worldwide competition back in November.

Last week the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne upheld the IAAF decision, so the Russian track and field won’t be in Rio.

That Court decision was the green light for Bach to kick Russia out of the Rio Games in total, but he trod the gutless path and handed responsibility over the individual governing sporting bodies.

His explanation – “Every human being is entitled to individual justice”.

Seeing as 20 of the 28 Olympic sports have been under state-controlled doping, that entitlement must be revoked. A stand has to be taken against cheating in sport.

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And further proof of Bach’s double standards is Russian 800m track athlete Yuliya Stepanova, the whistle-blower who brought this drug disgrace to the attention of WADA, the world anti-doping agency.

On July 1, Bach as a thank you, gave Stepanova permission to compete in Rio as a neutral, until he found out she had failed drug tests herself.

So that permission was revoked.

That matters not in the light of what happened yesterday. Bach has invited Stepanova and her husband to Rio as the special guests of the IOC.

Bach has got to go, the sooner the better.

To make matters worse, if that’s possible, the Rio Olympic Village is a shambles.

The gas and electricity aren’t working, and there’s water pouring out of the light fittings.

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The Australians competitors currently in Rio have had to find alternative accommodation.

As I wrote two months ago, the IOC will rue the day they awarded the Games to Rio.

But I honestly never thought Thomas Bach would turn out to be such a gutless failure as IOC president.

You live and learn.

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