The International Olympic Committee has lifted its ban on Russia after the remaining drug tests from the Pyeongchang Olympics tested negative.
Scores of Russian athletes, coaches and officials were barred after an investigation into the yearslong conspiracy that peaked at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia, when the state security apparatus colluded with sports officials to swap drug-tainted urine samples with clean ones in a clandestine, dead-of-night operation.
The scandal and its aftermath have led to much upheaval in the global sporting movement, with many athletes and some of the I. O. C.’s own members critical of the way it had been dealt with. Richard Pound, the organization’s longest serving member, boycotted the closing of the Pyeongchang Games in protest. The doping scheme has now overshadowed no fewer than three Olympic Games.
Russia was finally punished by the International Olympic Committee in December, about two years after details of what Bach later described as an “unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic Games and Sport” first emerged.
At Sunday’s I. O. C. session, where the plan to rehabilitate Russia was first announced, Nicole Hoevertsz, an official from Aruba tasked with monitoring Russian compliance, said the time had come to move on.
“We should draw a line, we have to draw a line and look to the future,” she said. After the two failed drugs tests by Russian athletes — by the curler Alexander Krushelnytsky and the bobsledder Nadezhda Sergeeva — the I. O. C. did not lift the suspension for the closing ceremony.
Russia has still not acknowledged there was a state-controlled doping operation in the country, something described in great detail by its former doping laboratory head Grigory Rodchenkov and confirmed by three separate investigations. The World Anti-Doping Agency said it would continue to regard Russia’s domestic drug testing organization as noncompliant until it does.
Many of Russia’s top athletes were barred from the 2018 Games because of links to the doping scandal. That led to a weak performance, and a vast downgrade from the doping-fueled success in Sochi, where Russia topped the medals table. Alina Zagitova, a 15-year-old figure skater, beat her compatriot Evgenia Medvedeva in a battle for gold, before the Russians secured the men’s ice hockey title in an overtime victory over Germany on the final day.
That win came after the I. O. C. announced Russia would not be able to march in the closing ceremony. The winning players sang the Russian national anthem, something they had been prohibited from doing by the I. O. C. as a condition of Russian athletes’ participation in the Games.
As well as the Olympic ban, Russia was forced to pay a $15 million fine. Still, the team’s uniform included the country’s name, something that the I. O. C. hadn’t permitted before for a team of neutral athletes. Bach said that was because of the desire not to “humiliate” Russia.
The effects of the scandal continue to roil the sports world. Several biathletes, including members of the United States team, have announced that they will not participate in next month’s season-ending competition in Russia, while soccer’s governing body, FIFA, is facing scrutiny just four months before the World Cup in Russia over claims of doping by players from there.
