Olympic Games 2018: IOC President Bach defends exclusion of Russian Athelten

IOC President Thomas Bach has announced the exclusion of several top Russian athletes from the Olympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang (09. till 25. February). The IOC’s “Invitation Review Panel”, Bach said in an international telephone conference with news agencies on Wednesday, had made a very “serious” and “responsible” decision.

“It is in the interests of the IOC to ensure fair play, and also in Russia’s interest, to have only clean athletes compete at the games in Pyeongchang,”said the German IOC President. The young athletes from the giant empire now have the chance in South Korea to be “ambassadors of a new and clean Russia,”said the 64-year-old.

When asked why the IOC did not justify the decisions, Bach referred to the panel chaired by the former French Minister of Sport, Valerie Fourneyron, which “examined information from a wide range of sources and checked each athlete individually,”said Bach. The Commission wanted to “leave no doubt”that in the end only clean Russian athletes will actually start in South Korea.

On Tuesday, it became known that well-known Russian athletes such as biathlete Anton Schipulin, short-tracker Viktor Ahn, cross-country skier Sergei Ustjugov, pair-run Olympic Xenia Stolbowa and ice dance EC third Ivan Bukin were removed from the list of candidates for a start under neutral flag.

Allegedly, the analysis by the Fourneyron panel of the Moscow Doping Control Laboratory’s database of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) by the Fourneyron Panel has revealed anomalies among the athletes concerned. The initiation of proceedings could be too tricky for the IOC for legal reasons, however, which is why the ring order as the organizer of the Games chose a detour and simply did not invite the athletes to Pyeongchang.

At the beginning of December, the IOC excluded the Russian National Olympic Committee (ROC) from the Winter Games because of systematic doping, but offered clean Russian athletes the prospect of a start under Olympic flag and anthem under certain conditions. In a first step, the review panel of the IOC and the so-called OAR Implementation Group reduced the list of potential starters under a neutral flag from 500 to 389 “clean” candidates.

Moreover, Thomas Bach has little sympathy for the criticism of North and South Korea’s joint appearances at the Winter Olympics. Especially in the south resistance had formed.

“I think that will be a moment full of great feelings for Korean people, but also for people from other countries,”Bach said in Lausanne on Wednesday. The joint appearance of the ice hockey women and the opening and closing ceremony would symbolize peace. Bach also admitted, however, that not all South Koreans would share this enthusiasm,”for whatever political reasons”.

The Korea Times had reported that there is an online petition in the South with around 40,000 supporters calling for a departure from the decision taken at the summit meeting of both countries in Lausanne on Saturday.

There was also resentment within the South Korean women’s ice hockey team. Sarah Murray, the Canadian national coach of the South Korean team, revealed that she was initially “shocked”. She liked the idea of a joint team from North and South at the Olympic Games in February,”but it’s different to have to play so close to Olympic players now than it was two or three years ago”.

Bach emphasized that he was not so surprised by the wish of North Korea to participate in the Olympics, which was expressed by dictator Kim Jong Un for the first time in his New Year’s speech a few weeks ago. Since 2014 there have been talks with the North about participation. The reactions from the north were “never quite negative”, said Bach,”sometimes sober, sometimes positive”. The IOC had always hoped that the North would be present in Pyeongchang.