When Russia’s track and field athletes were suspended from international competition last November most observers reckoned it was a temporary if necessary slap on the wrist and that the IAAF’s president Seb Coe would smooth the political waters to ensure their return at the Rio Olympics. Instead athletics’ governing body has not only pulled up the drawbridge but appears intent on keeping it shut.
Russian athletes and politicians spluttered and fumed at the news. But Rune Andersen, the head of the IAAF’s task force into the country, quickly and coolly dissected a Russian system he said could not be trusted. And, as it became clear, the IAAF had a subtler intention too: to blunt any efforts of the International Olympic Committee to water down its decision.
For months everyone has expected a soft-centred fudge between the IAAF and IOC. Yet here was the IAAF playing hardball.
Even when Andersen revealed some Russian track and field athletes might make it to the Olympics he erected barriers so steep few could realistically clamber over them. Anyone Russian wanting to be in Rio had to “clearly and convincingly” show they were not tainted by the Russian system, which meant in practice living and being tested outside the country. And – another twist of the knife into the Russian bear – they also had to “apply for permission to compete in international competitions, not for Russia but as a neutral athlete”.
In reality that leaves a couple of names – the 800m runner Yulia Stepanova, who is in hiding in the US after revealing the secrets of her country’s doping regime, and Darya Klashina, the talented long-jumper, who has been with the IMG academy for the past two years.
At a stretch Russia’s world junior pole vault champion Alena Lutkovskaya, who is training in Italy but has not jumped this year, might make it too. But that is about it.
In another sign of the IAAF’s belligerence, Andersen said it had included this clause mainly because the IAAF’s lawyers had advised “there should be a way out if their ruling was challenged in court”.
As, of course, it will be. While Coe and Andersen were still speaking, the double Olympic pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva was calling their decision a “human rights violation” and threatening to take action. ‚
“I won’t keep silent,” she warned. “I’ll turn to a human rights court. I’ll prove to the IAAF and the World Anti-Doping Agency that they have made a wrong decision. I’ll do this demonstratively so that it is understood that Russia won’t stay silent.”
Her defence is a simple one. She has been tested all over the world, in the course of setting 28 world records and winning two Olympic and seven world championships, and she has never failed a test. How the Court of Arbitration for Sport weigh the rights of individual Russians with the need to protect clean athletes from a country where state-sponsored doping was endemic will be a fascinating sub-plot in the weeks ahead.
It felt appropriate Coe and Andersen were speaking in Grand hotel Wien, on the banks of the River Danube, where Johann Strauss – the king of the waltz - celebrated his 50-year jubilee. Because the dance is likely to become increasingly fast.
The next important stage will take place in Lausanne, Switzerland, on Tuesday when the IOC meets for an special Olympic summit which will examine how individual athletes protesting their innocence as clean athletes can appeal the blanket Russian ban.
As the IOC vice president John Coates explained: “I would think there would be appeal opportunities for someone who can establish their individual integrity.”
His words matter more than most given he is also president of the court of arbitration for sport, the ultimate ruler on sporting disputes, and a close friend of the IOC president, Thomas Bach. Expect there to be a steady beat on CAS’s doors in the weeks ahead.
How the IOC acts will also be crucial. It has long been thought Bach wanted Russia’s athletes in the Olympics. However, there are those within his organisation who believe the letter that he recently received from the IOC athletes’ commission – as exclusively revealed by the Guardian – reminding him of his duty to clean athletes, put the pressure on at just the right time.
Any IOC fudge to allow Russian track and field stars back into Rio would go down very badly.
There is one great unknown in all this: what the Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren, who has been asked to look into allegations of doping at the Sochi Olympics and the claims of former Russian doping chief Grigory Rodchenko of widespread state-supported doping, will find when he reports to Wada next month.
What exactly he has discovered is unclear. But Andersen admitted that McLaren had already passed on “detailed allegations ... that the Russian Ministry of Sport, far from supporting the anti-doping effort, has in fact orchestrated systematic doping and the covering up of adverse analytical findings.”
Given that is the case, some athletes have asked why the ban on Russian track and field athletics should not be extended to other sports.
Weightlifting and swimming, where there have been widespread allegations and a spate of positive tests, are obvious candidates. As John Leonard, the director of the World Swimming Coaches Association, put it: “Reasonable people will conclude that the Russian track and field team should be banned but not see that there is sufficient evidence yet to ban other sports.
“In reality, the whole nation should be banned, though I doubt that will happen.”
Most would agree with his analysis and his conclusion.
But while senior IAAF officials left the Grand hotel believing they had struck a blow for clean sport, others know all too well this may not be the end of the matter.
For in the wider Olympic family a coat of whitewash can be applied to even the blackest of sheep.
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