No Russians at the Olympic Games in 2022: “Russia is still doing well” | Opinion

This is actually an offshoot of a scandal that has captivated us for years. That started 5 years ago in athletics and led to research after research. In the end, this is how organized doping practices during the Winter Games in Sochi 2014 came to light.

Then Russia was already suspended once. You may remember that 2 years ago, the Russians were only allowed to participate in the Winter Games in Pyeongchang as a neutral athlete.

Shortly afterwards, that suspension was lifted. In order for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) to fully comply with the regulations, Russia still had to hand over the database of the controversial anti-doping lab in Moscow.

That happened too late to begin with. The deadline was missed and it soon became clear that Russia had messed with those files. Then WADA declared Russia “non-compliant”, as it is called (“non-compliant”, ed.).

Under the new rules, the country was then suspended for 4 years and banned from all global sporting events. Russia appealed against this to the International Sports Tribunal TAS. That in a sense confirmed the sentence on Thursday, but strangely enough it halved it. So not a 4-year suspension, but a 2-year suspension up to and including December 2022.

Well, to put it in a nutshell: the TAS says that halving that penalty in no way diminishes Russia’s guilt, but simply wants to give future young generations of Russian athletes the necessary opportunities to exercise in a doping-free way. .

If you ask me, that sounds like a typical tune from the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach. He has always been against the exclusion of Russia and therefore now a suspension of 2 years.

So Russia is not allowed to go to Tokyo next year, not even to the Winter Games in Beijing the following year. And suppose Russia qualifies for the World Cup in Qatar, then they are not allowed to participate there either.

But it is noticeable that the TAS goes very far in its ruling to mitigate the impact for Russia.

Clean Russian athletes will always be allowed to participate, they can also put “Russia” on their outfits with “neutral athlete” underneath in equally large letters. And those outfits may not show the Russian flag, but they can have the colors of the Russian flag. You can’t really call that neutral.

WADA is of course involved and regrets the halving of the sentence. WADA is satisfied that it was ultimately proved right and that Russia was found guilty.

I have not yet seen a response at the IOC. But you can be sure that Thomas Bach and co will rub their hands, because you can bet that a large delegation of Russian athletes in the Russian colors will participate in Tokyo and Beijing.

I also took a look at the Russian sports newspaper, Sovietski Sport. There is the headline: “Russia has escaped the worst.” So they do know there.

And the other reactions are downright devastating and negative. The lawyer of Grigori Rodsjenko, the whistleblower of that doping lab in Moscow, calls the decision of the TAS nonsense and unjustified. He calls it a symbolic suspension of Russia.

And they are also furious at the American anti-doping agency. There they are talking about a major defeat for WADA and the pure athletes. And that politics has surpassed the principles of a pure sport and I fear they are not entirely wrong.

Russia is once again getting off well and once again I ask myself the question: “What kind of bastard do you have to do as a country to just be excluded?” We are always looking for ways out and that is also the case here. At first sight it seems like a severe punishment. But in practice it will all be better than expected for Russia.