Olympia: Bach tightens tone with Russia

Less than two weeks before the International Olympic Committee’s decision in the state doping scandal, IOC head Thomas Bach has tightened the tone with regard to Russia.

“Some may think they can influence the decision with whatever kind of pressure on the IOC. Wherever some people want to build up pressure – they will not succeed,”Bach said at the General Assembly of the European Olympic Committee (EOC) in Zagreb, but without mentioning Russia.

Russian sport has to fear complete exclusion from the forthcoming winter games in Pyeongchang due to the systematic doping of its athletes and manipulation of doping controls by domestic participants at the Olympic Winter Games in Sochi in 2014.

In several individual cases, the IOC has deprived Russian winter sportsmen of Sochi’s successes following hearings and imposed lifelong Olympic suspensions for doping offences.

Russia vehemently denies the allegations of state doping that emerged in the spring of 2016 and shortly afterwards confirmed in the McLaren Report. In the event of drastic sanctions, countermeasures have already been announced by various parties in Russia.

NOK President Alexander Zhukov threatened with a boycott of the games if Russia is not allowed to start in Pyeongchang under its own flag. The Russian-controlled Continental Hockey League (KHL) recently threatened to ban its foreign ice hockey professionals from participating in the Olympic Games in South Korea.

In Zagreb, in view of the outstanding results of the two IOC investigation commissions, Bach once again emphasized the differences between the current situation and the much-criticized abandonment of Russia’s exclusion from the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro:”Now it’s about the events of the Winter Games in Sochi in 2014. Now it is about what happened at the Olympic Games, in a doping laboratory of the Olympic Games. Now it’s up to us, and we’ll have to consider that when I say that we’ll make a fair decision.”

Unlike before Rio, Bach continued, the work of the Schmidt- and Oswald-Commission had led to an educational process. In addition, there would have been fair hearing opportunities for the athletes concerned. For the time being, however, the IOC has not yet received any results from the investigative commissions.