There won’t be zero Russian athletes at these Olympics, as some might have thought. There will actually be quite a bit more than zero Russians here.
PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – Now that the Super Bowl is upon us and the Winter Olympics are not far behind, it’s the perfect time to catch up on what’s been going on with the banishment of Russia from the 2018 Games as a lifetime achievement award for the worst state-sponsored doping since East Germany existed as an actual nation.
I’m sorry to report that the ban isn’t going very well.
There won’t be zero Russian athletes at these Olympics, as some might have thought. There will actually be quite a bit more than zero Russians here: 169 to be exact, all judged to be “clean” by an IOC panel, with the chance that another 13 who were deemed to be cheating could sneak back in thanks to a surprising reprieve last week from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. That could mean a grand total of 182 Russians competing at these Games, which would be just 50 fewer than the 232 who were in Sochi four years ago.
This is a ban only a guy named Vladimir Putin could love.
It’s all really quite a fiasco, and it was on display for all to see as International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach spent more than 20 consecutive minutes at his opening news conference answering reporters’ questions about Russia, one after another after another, trying to explain what in the world is going on.
“I understand the confusion and I feel really sorry, particularly for the athletes,” Bach said, “but given the fact that we can hopefully have a decision of the (IOC’s invitation review) panel in the next couple of days, then this issue should be solved well ahead of the Games.”
Bach’s definition of “well ahead” and your and my definition of “well ahead” would appear to be two very different things, considering the Games begin this Friday.
The IOC clearly was thrown for a loop by the CAS decision clearing 28 Russian Winter Olympic athletes of their punishment, including the 13 who hope to compete in Pyeongchang. Bach reiterated that CAS’s decision is not final, that the IOC does the inviting to the Olympics, and that it wants to see what CAS was thinking before issuing a final ruling. CAS’ rationale for clearing the Russians should come in what is called its “reasoned decision,” but no one has seen it yet.
In fact, Bach said he was told it might not be ready until the end of February, which isn’t really that helpful because the Olympics will be over by then.
After digesting all of this, is anyone out there now wishing the IOC had issued the blanket ban some of us have wanted since the 2016 Rio Games – no appeals, no exceptions, no nothing?
Instead, by banning Russia but then allowing “clean” Russian athletes to petition their way into the Games, the IOC ensured exactly what’s happening now: a daily drip-drip-drip of embarrassing missteps and bureaucratic confusion.
Even so, the non-banishment ban still has a little bit of kick left in it. Russian athletes won’t officially be called Russians, but instead Olympic Athletes from Russia, which doesn’t offer them much of a disguise. But it does mean that any medals they win won’t count as being officially Russian.
This is not insignificant. We already know how many medals Russia will officially win at these Olympics: zero. Fifty years from now, when a student is looking up how Russia did at the 2018 Winter Olympics, he or she will see that it didn’t do well at all. You can be sure that Putin, who was counting every tainted medal in Sochi, does not like this one bit, which means it’s a very good thing.
There are other restrictions due to the IOC “ban”: no Russian flag at the opening ceremony, no Russian flag in any medal ceremony and no Russian national anthem played for gold-medal winners. Again, this is not nothing.
Bach made all kinds of excuses Sunday about why he didn’t ban Russia from Rio and why he then did ban Russia from Pyeongchang but still wanted to give young, clean Russian athletes a chance to compete, even though who can say they’re clean because they come from the same dirty system that got us into this mess in the first place.
Said Bach: “The athletes can trust in the IOC that we (will) do everything to clarify this situation as soon as possible, and that we (will) clarify it in the spirit of the decision we took on the 5th of December.”
That decision was to ban Russia. Well, kind of.
