Olympia 2018: Sörgel criticizes IOC – “Sportfan for stupid sells”.

Doping expert Fritz Sörgel criticized the International Olympic Committee in a legal tug-of-war over the participation of Russian athletes in the Winter Games in Pyeongchang.

“In my opinion, the IOC has a clear, predicted strategy. The IOC cannot seriously claim that it expected a confirmation of the suspensions at the International Sports Court CAS. If anti-doping experts did not expect this, how would the IOC please?”, said Sörgel in an interview with SID.

“From the point of view of the IOC, the IOC and Thomas Bach have acted correctly, from the point of view of sport they have acted indecently. Sörgel added:”They have sold the sports fan for stupid and insulted him with it.

IOC spokesman Christian Klaue replied that “Mr. Sörgel had read too many detective novels”, saying:”It takes a lot of imagination to claim that all this could have been foreseen in the same way,”Klaue said.

In the run-up to the Olympic Games, the IOC had closed a total of 43 Russian athletes to the Olympics for life because of the doping scandal. Last week, CAS lifted the barriers on 28 athletes. In eleven other cases, doping violations were detected and the objections were only partially confirmed.

The judgement was also criticised by the IOC President Bach, who had also called for reforms of the CAS.

“It is another chapter in the blinding of the public by organised sport. In recent years, CAS has made a number of decisions that have amazed me. But for which court is that not true?”, said Sörgel:”If Mr. Bach means with reforms that the CAS should become a part of the IOC and participates in the games without resistance, then this would be another catastrophic defeat for the sport”.

Klaue said:”Mr. Sörgel himself says that CAS has made a number of unpredictable judgments in recent years. This also applies here. It would be good to hear Mr Sörgel correcting the Sochi lists of results. It would be indecent not to try this.”

Moreover, Sörgel does not give the German IOC president generally speaking a good testimony:”If one day you look back on his term of office and he continues as before, he will be one of the presidents who have seriously harmed the Olympic movement”.