Pound, Fahey Warn IOC to Ban Russia or Risk Damaging Olympic Movement

(ATR) Richard Pound tells Around the Rings the landmark ruling on Russia on Sunday "could be a major tipping point for the IOC if it gets it wrong".

"I do not know what, if any, legal impediments may exist," Pound said ahead of Sunday's landmark decision by the IOC on a possible total ban for Russia from the Rio Games.

The former WADA chief was referring to the IOC’s decision on Tuesday to postpone its decision on any blanket ban to "explore the legal options". The ruling followed the explosive findings of investigator Richard McLaren’s WADA report detailing state-sponsored doping and cover-ups in Russia involving government officials and secret service agents.

The Canadian IOC member backs a complete ban; earlier this week he questioned the IOC’s reluctance to exclude all Russian athletes from the Rio Olympics.

John Fahey, another former head of the World Anti-Doping Agency, also heaped pressure on the IOC, saying anything less than a complete ban on Russia would threaten the integrity of the Olympic Movement."To have Russia there will put into jeopardy the world's view of the Olympics.

"This is widespread corruption - not individual; not a group; not one sport," Fahey said of the 20 of 28 Summer Olympic sports named in McLaren’s report.

"It's a conspiracy of the state through the ministry of sport, the anti-doping organisation, their security service and the previously accredited Moscow lab," Fahey was quoted by the Australian Associated Press.

"They have all conspired to bring this about."

The IOC Executive Board holds a teleconference on Sunday to decide Russia’s fate. President Thomas Bach is under intense pressure to ban all Russian athletes from the Games, a reputation-defining moment in his nearly three years at the helm of the Olympic body.

After the Court of Arbitration for Sport verdict on Thursday to uphold the IAAF’s suspension on the Russian athletics team from Rio, the IOC can ill-afford to get it wrong.

One likely option is to delegate responsibility to the international federations named in McLaren’s report, a move that will come in for heavy criticism and may spark an athlete revolt unless it is combined with other punishments or additional provisional measures to those the IOC announced earlier this week.

Leading figures at the June Olympic Summit led by Bach decided to leave it to the IAAF to resolve its issues with Russia after the IAAF Council ruled to stick with its international suspension imposed in November. For other federations operating undera similar scenario, only athletes subjected to extra drug testing and individual evaluation by the IFs might be declared eligible to compete in Rio.

But with just two weeks to the Rio opening ceremony, that course of action from the IOC would be fraught with complications, linked to a lack of time, resources and legal issues, for the 20 summer sports federations charged with getting 'clean' athletes to the starting blocks in Rio.

If the IOC went further and slapped Russia with an unprecedented ban, Bach risks a Russian backlash and opening up divides in the Olympic movement.

Russian NOC Reacts to CAS Ruling

Ringing in the ears of IOC executive board members on Sunday will be some of the explosive revelations of McLaren’s WADA report and the line that the Russian sports ministry "directed, controlled and oversaw" the tampering with athlete’s doping samples from 2011 to 2015.

Having applauded the Russian NOC and its president Alexander Zhukov for its cooperation with the the IAAF task force probing the Russian doping scandal, Bach and his colleagues will have noted the NOC’s reaction to the CAS decision last night with great interest.

"The decision has created a dangerous precedent and, from now on, the entire sports world will live under new laws," the NOC said in a statement sent to ATR.

"These laws put the rights of sports federations above the rights of any clean athlete and provide a legitimate reason for them to stay unpunished for arbitrariness they create," it said, saying it amounted to discrimination "because no one should be forced to leave their homeland".

The Russian NOC said the CAS verdict "violates the rights of all clean athletes who starting from today will bear a collective responsibility for the guilt of others".

"A new page for everyone in the Olympic Movement has been turned and the ideals and principles which guide us have been dealt a powerful blow. The rights of clean athletes are now negligible, and according to representatives of CAS, at any moment an athlete may become an ‘innocent victim’," the statement said, adding that the Russian Olympic Committee would "fight till the end for the rights of all clean Russian athletes in any international human rights organizations".

Saying that personal responsibility "cannot and should not extend to the innocent", the ROC urged the IOC and international federations to "make a fair and objective decision on the admission of clean Russian athletes to participate in the Olympic Games in Rio."

Reported by Mark Bisson

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