Pyeongchang organising committee for February’s Winter Olympics, added the decision caught the Games organisers off guard.“We did not know that it (the punishment) would be this much,” Lee said, adding there was a “heated debate” among the IOC members before reaching the decision.
The move raises the prospect of Moscow boycotting the Games, something that organisers will be desperate to avoid as they battle low ticket sales and concern over North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests.
The IOC had the option of hitting Russia with a blanket ban, the so-called nuclear option that was applied to apartheid-era South Africa from 1964 to 1988.The IOC’s decision to choose a more moderate path offers some Russian athletes a route to competing in the Games — although that will be by invitation only and dependent on a stringent testing programme.
“The IOC, at its absolute discretion, will ultimately determine the athletes to be invited from the list,” the IOC said in a statement.No Russian athlete with a previous doping violation will be allowed to compete and no official who had a leadership role at Sochi 2014 will be invited to Pyeongchang.
Those athletes who do go to the Games will participate under the name “Olympic Athlete from Russia” and the country’s flag will not fly at any 2018 ceremony, the IOC also said.
The US Olympic Committee praised the IOC’s “strong and principled decision”.
“There were no perfect options, but this decision will clearly make it less likely that this ever happens again,” it said.
For Grigory Rodchenkov, the former Russian laboratory chief and whistleblower who lifted the lid on the cheating scheme, the IOC’s action was a needed step to clean up the Olympic movement.
“It was the most elaborate and sophisticated doping system in the history of sports. If it did not carry the most significant sanction it would simply have emboldened Russia and other countries who don’t respect the rules”, Rodchenkov’s lawyer, Jim Walden, told reporters on a conference call.
Russian officials have previously met doping accusations with defiance.Mutko has said the allegations were an attempt “to create an image of an axis of evil” against his country while Putin has warned that a Russia ban would cause “serious harm to the Olympic movement”.He said forcing Russian athletes to compete under a neutral flag would amount to a national “humiliation”.