Has The Russian Masquerade Stretched to Foxing The IOC Into CAS Case Fit To Ruin Rio?

Editorial

Jeden tag eine neue scandal, as Nick Thierry used to say when contemplating the folly of FINA. It hardly stops at the swim fed. If it isn’t doping, it’s uninhabitable housing for the athletes.

On the cusp of the 31st Olympic Games, in Rio 2016 and a first visit to South America, Baron Pierre de Coubertin might well be turning in his grave.

Just 10 days to go until the swimmers take the plunge and this would normally be a time of preview, of tune-up and focus on how the athletes, coaches and teams are getting along on camp. A time of promise and the thrill in the prospect of the biggest party in the pool.

But no, the guardians of sport, Russia’s regime included, have delivered a pig in a poke that all must now cope with.

Yesterday brought news of seven Russian swimmers being barred from Rio 2016. Will it stand? That is the question. Has a Russian masquerade delivered yet another pig in a poke and – making no apology for mixing metaphors, chaos being the order of the day – has it pulled the wool over the eyes of an unwilling or willing IOC?

Take this from The Times today: “Russia offered to sacrifice its athletes who had previously been sanctioned for doping as part of its plea to avoid a blanket ban from the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, it can be revealed.

“Olympic sources have told The Times that Russia offered not to pick at least eight athletes with a doping history, even if they had served their suspensions, at Sunday’s meeting of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive board, which later ruled out a ban of the entire Russia team.”

Why would Russia sacrifice Efimova and Co? That will be put to the test in the days ahead. If Russia is serious and genuine, then there will be no appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. If it made this move deliberately, knowing that the sacrifice followed by the CAS-appeal route would not only avoid a blanket ban but get its dopers back in, too, then Efimova and Co will have their day in court and arbitration may well deliver the death of the Olympic Games in Rio.

The IOC passed the ball to FINA, FINA passed the ball back to Russia and Efimova’s team, which passes the ball to CAS confident that, with Gatlin in goal, victory is assured.

That is why a blanket ban was essential: and surely the combined brains of the IOC leadership knew it. If they did not, then the best that can be said of them is that by seeking to avoid one legal complexity they have facilitated another and delivered what could be the death of them all.

Efimova’s agent, a man constantly on the go this year, what with his client having tested five times positive for meldonium with scant mention in the mix of the DHEA she tested positive for in 2013, delivered the line for the Russian regime when he delared “Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) here we come”.

The test will be a keen one: on what basis can the IOC and FINA bar four Russian swimmers from Rio when Sun Yang*, Park Tae-hwan* and others will take to their blocks on the first day of racing in the 400m freestyle?

The International Olympic Committee has been sleeping at the wheel. When the CAS dealt the Olympic Movement a serious blow by kicking the ‘Osaka’ rule into touch, the IOC should have hit back with a new set of rules that covered it. Response should have been a priority and emergency session called to put water on a flame that was always going to burn for cheats while burning clean athletes.

All that needed to happen was for penalties for the most serious offences – the categorisation of which has been in the hands of WADA and IOC folk alike – to be “four years minumum” on a scale of a ban of “up to eight years”. All who fall foul within any Olympic cycle would therefore not be eligible …

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