Olympic Games: DLV President Prokop pleads for Russia’s expulsion

In the Russian state doping affair, Clemens Prokop, President of the German Athletics Association, has pledged for a complete exclusion of Russian athletes from the 2018 Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang (9. till 25. February).

The Olympic Charter allows the IOC to impose such a penalty on the state-run doping system described in the McLaren report.

“I believe that if we take seriously the first fundamental principle of sport – namely equal opportunities in competition – we will not be able to avoid making use of these clauses in sport, which provide for the exclusion of national associations. Prokop said at a symposium of the Forum for International Sport Law in Hamburg on Monday:”This would have the effect that systematic fraud would have to be tolerated on a permanent basis.

A non-exclusion would be a “permanent retreat against the fundamental principle of equal opportunities in international competition”, said Prokop. He is convinced that “we have no alternative but to take advantage of these opportunities” The decision on whether to allow Russian athletes to participate in the South Korean Winter Games will most likely be taken at the beginning of December when the IOC Executive Board meets in Lausanne.

According to IOC member Patrick Baumann, the decision had to be made in the “tension between the fundamental right to individual justice and a possible collective responsibility”, it had to be “not white and not black”. The Swiss emphasized that the IOC’s decisions “are and remain independent of attempts at political influence or media campaigns in one direction or another”.

The judgement was to be made in a “due process of law and sound procedure exclusively on the basis of the applicable rules and regulations”. In addition, the IOC executive is “not necessarily bound by the findings of Mr. McLaren or the findings of the Schmidt and Oswald Commissions”, Baumann said.

The so-called “Oswald Commission” was commissioned by the IOC to investigate doping offences committed by Russian athletes and their coaches at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. The Schmidt Commission tries to work out which athletes, officials and coaches were involved in state doping. SID ks ma