U.S. officials outraged as IOC decides against blanket doping ban for Russia

Sports

U.S. officials outraged as IOC decides against blanket doping ban for Russia

The International Olympic Committee on Sunday decided against hitting Russia with a blanket ban from the Rio Games over state-run doping but laid out unprecedented eligibility conditions for individual Russian athletes. The IOC faced global calls to act after a World Anti-Doping Agency report last week detailed a massive cheating program that affected 30 sports and widened the worst drug scandal in Olympic history. IOC president Thomas Bach said the body stopped short of an historic outright ban in order to protect the rights of clean Russian competitors hoping to take part at the Games which start in two weeks.

Following the report, fourteen national doping agencies — including the United States, Germany and Japan — as well as several national Olympic committees had demanded Russia’s exclusion from Rio. The U.S., Canada and others slammed the IOC’s decision calling it ‘a blow to clean athletes.’ Separately, an IOC ethics commission ruled that Russian track and field star Yuliya Stepanova, a former doping competitor turned whistleblower, could not participate in the Rio Olympics even as a neutral.