The International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that its executive board has begun to consider its legal options regarding a total ban of Russia’s athletic teams from this summer’s Olympics in Rio.
On Monday, a report issued by the World Anti-Doping Agency found “beyond a reasonable doubt” that the Russian government ran a widespread doping system for years in multiple Olympic sports and called for the IOC to ban Russia from this year’s Games, which begin Aug. 5.
The IOC “will explore the legal options with regard to a collective ban of all Russian athletes for the Olympic Games 2016 versus the right to individual justice,” the governing body said in a statement, issued after an emergency meeting of top Olympic officials.
Russia’s track and field teams already have been banned from this year’s Olympics by the International Association of Athletics Federations because of doping, a decision that Russia has appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. The CAS ruling is expected on Thursday, and the IOC said in its statement that it will take the ruling into consideration when making its decision on a collective ban.
Many observers have called for Russia to be completely banned from this year’s Olympics because of its elaborate, widespread doping program. Others, however, say a blanket ban would unfairly hurt certain Russian teams and athletes that were not implicated in any doping scheme.
The IOC also has appointed a five-member disciplinary commission that will hand out punishments to the Russian Ministry of Sports officials who were implicated in the WADA report, adding that any official implicated in the report will not receive IOC accreditation to the Rio Olympics.
“The findings of the report show a shocking and unprecedented attack on the integrity of sports and on the Olympic Games. Therefore, the IOC will not hesitate to take the toughest sanctions available against any individual or organisation implicated,” IOC President Thomas Bach said in the statement.
The IOC also announced that it’s provisionally withholding patronage of any sporting event held in Russia, including the 2019 European Games, which were awarded to the Russian cities of Sochi and Kazan so long as the country addresses concerns uncovered in a previous WADA doping investigation. The IOC also will investigate every Russian athlete who participated in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi and asked that all winter sports federations halt their preparations for major events scheduled for Russia, such as world championships.
The WADA report — which was spurred by a number of media investigations — found that Russia’s Ministry of Sport covered up positive doping results by hundreds of elite athletes in at least 30 Summer and Winter Olympic sports, most prolifically in track and field and weightlifting, but also in swimming, cycling, skating, ice hockey and even table tennis. According to the investigation, the FSB — a successor agency to the KGB — devised a method to crack open supposedly tamper-proof sample bottles in an elaborate covert scheme at the 2014 Sochi Olympics to replace tainted urine of Russian athletes with clean urine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin decried the report’s findings as politically motivated but also said any official named in the report would be suspended while the government conducts its own investigation.