Olympics: Winter Games 2018: Putin’s conspiracy theories

According to Vladimir Putin, behind the scenes the US wants to keep Russia out of the Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Vladimir Putin denounces the USA with a conspiracy theory, Canada calls for provisional bans against Russian athletes: 112 days before the opening of the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, the sporting climate is becoming increasingly frosty. Putin accused the US of indirectly putting pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to banish Russia from the Winter Games.

“We have no problem with the IOC. There are very decent people, businessmen, but they are dependent on advertising customers, TV channels and so on,”Putin said at a conference in the Olympic city of Sochi:”These sponsors in turn receive clear signals from certain American authorities. We don’t just accept it, we know it,” he didn’t say which authorities to deal with.

The TV giant NBC has signed a record contract with the IOC for the 2014 matches between 2022 and 2032 for 7.65 billion dollars (5.5 billion euros). Numerous top sponsors of the IOC come from the USA.

Putin in turn increased the pressure on the IOC. If Russian athletes were banned or forced to start neutral-flagged at the games in Pyeongchang, this would mean “a degradation of the country” and would cause “serious harm” to the Olympic movement. With this statement, it is more than ever questionable whether Putin would allow his athletes to start under a neutral flag in South Korea at all.

In an open letter on Thursday, IOC President Thomas Bach had called for understanding for the delays in dealing with the doping scandal and promised possible measures against Russia by the end of the year. If he had hoped that this would smooth things out, the German business lawyer was mistaken. After all, Canada also caused further unrest in sporting policy.

The USA neighbour was the first country to demand provisional suspension of Russian athletes in the course of the doping scandal. If the results of the investigation by the two commissions appointed by the IOC are not available shortly,”measures, including suspensions, would have to be taken to preserve the integrity of the Winter Olympics”, said Tricia Smith, President of the Canadian Olympic Committee COC.

The IOC, all NOKs and international federations should send a strong message to the world that “a new, clean and sustainable future for international sport is now beginning”.

Canadian law professor Richard McLaren had reported two reports that Russia had demonstrated a government-run doping system – including during the Winter Games in Sochi. There, containers containing doping samples had been opened with the help of the secret service and the urine of the athletes had been exchanged or manipulated.

Now the pressure on Bach and the IOC is increasing. On the one hand, time is pressing, and the Ring Order does not want to see its premium event overshadowed by a chaos similar to that before and during the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro.

At that time, the IOC refrained from imposing a complete ban on Russia and delegated the decision as to whether individual athletes were allowed to compete or not to the hopelessly overtaxed international professional associations. In the end, almost 300 Russian athletes took part in the matches in Brazil.

It is unlikely that the Russians will be banned collectively from Pyeongchang. The IOC had recently rejected reports as “speculative” that Russia would only be sanctioned with a heavy fine.

Before the IOC executive decides, individual Russian athletes have to fear barriers. The hearings of the suspicious Russian Sochi starters by the so-called Oswald Commission are to be concluded by the end of November, and results are to be communicated individually and directly.

The cases of the Russian athletes, who started in Sochi in 2014 and are still active, will be dealt with first, but individual suspensions will be decided by the international federations as before Rio.