Toothless IOC sticks to its gums regarding Russian doping

The IOC overnight predictably chose the legal route over the populist, with its decision not to impose a blanket ban on the Russian Olympic team for Rio following the damning McLaren report.

No doubt with a cautious eye on the European Convention on Human Rights, the IOC prosecuted its charter’s interpretation of the Games as an occasion for individuals rather than nations.

It chose the presumption of individual innocence despite the McLaren Report’s finding of comprehensive Russian state assisted doping. The Russian track and field team is already banned from Rio by its own governing body, the IAAF.

Clearly, the implication is that only the various sport governing bodies have the wherewithal to impose group bans, as demonstrated by the unilateral IAAF action.

Yet notably, Article 3 of the IOC decision bans Russian competitors with a previous doping violation – even if they have served the appropriate penalty. Because this seemingly privileges eligible past dopers from other nations, there are likely to be immediate appeals to the CAS on these grounds, presuming time permits.

Some who were hoping for a blanket ban to draw a line in the sand against doping will be baying for IOC blood. Whether such critics will go as far as American swim coach boss John Leonard’s recent call for a competitor boycott is unlikely. To be fair, Leonard wanted a boycott only if the CAS failed to uphold the IAAF ban after it was challenge by affected athletes.

But even then, the call was misplaced and naive in presuming broad swimmer support.

The IOC still has a huge challenge with a continuing slide in prestige from growing perceptions that dopers are increasingly ahead of the game, with or without state support.

In this vastly bigger picture, it is unlikely a blanket ban on Russia would have served any concrete purpose.

With technology already utilising virus facilitated gene doping, and burgeoning athlete pay-packets to encourage a brave new doping world, the problem seems to be entering a science fiction stage.

Neither does rampant therapeutic use exemption (TUE) abuse seem to be lessening, with taxpayer funded approving bodies accused of maintaining suspiciously high levels of secrecy about prescription statistics and recipient identities.

Likewise the saturation global employment (again state sponsored) of “soft” doping alternatives such as altitude training camps to boost EPO levels before major competitions.

In this light of both continuing rogue activity and institutional softening, it is easy to understand the increasingly fashionable stance (particularly among academics) that sport should drop its fight against doping in favour of a globally regulated PED regime. But there are significant moral objections to this too.

Just one of these is that cheats will want to exceed what they might regard (under such circumstances) as overly conservative legal doping limits, accelerating already high health risks in the process.