Team Russia

[Eclair]

25 minutes ago, sallycinnamon said:

They stated in that report that they haven't found any independent and impartial evidence...no comments then Sadly, it's just about world politics, nothing more.

 

I hope Russians will make the decision which is best for their athletes and for the country as well. If their athletes will compete as neutrals, I hope they will be in top form at the Games and will fight for medals with even more strength and motivation It would be humiliating not to see the flag and hear the anthem on the podium though.

 

Let's wait and see what the final decision will be...

The IOC DC has not found any documented, independent and impartial evidence confirming the support 
or the knowledge of this system by the highest State authority.

 

which basically means, they have not found evidence that Putin was personally involved. Not that they didn't find evidence that there was state-sponsored doping - this there was plenty of evidence

[sallycinnamon]

26 minutes ago, Eclair said:

The IOC DC has not found any documented, independent and impartial evidence confirming the support 
or the knowledge of this system by the highest State authority.

 

which basically means, they have not found evidence that Putin was personally involved. Not that they didn't find evidence that there was state-sponsored doping - this there was plenty of evidence

 

Personally I don't think the evidences for state-sponsored doping were independent and impartial either.  And that he was not involved was evident.

[liv]

Personally, I believe Putin knew all about it...  it's long been known that he wants to return Russia back to its former glory and boost national pride... and achieving athletic excellence at the Olympics has always been a way to do this, for any country. Of course, you'll never find evidence of this. But, that's just imho....

 

So, the skaters will be able to go (unless Putin declares otherwise, fingers crossed he lets them all go). This is good news. They have to look at the bright side. I"m sure they've been tested by other doping control authorities for a while now, so they'll be able to show they are clean. I understand the importance of flag and anthem when standing on the podium, but I would think sitting on the couch at home is far worse than having to stand on the podium with a gold medal around your neck.  To win a gold medal, there's a lot of pride in that achievement... and everyone knows where you are from, just by virtue of what you're NOT wearing.

[Yatagarasu]

38 minutes ago, liv said:

I"m sure they've been tested by other doping control authorities for a while now, so they'll be able to show they are clean.

 

UKAD has been doing all the testing for the Russians for a good while now, so yes, they're completely covered there. Eteri even spoke relatively recently about this, Zhenya gets tested at every competition, plus all those outside random tests. If I remember well they knocked on her door at 5:30 am recently. But that's just how it goes and it's actually a good thing now, considering all of this should cover her, and all the other Russian skaters, for the requirements that they need to fulfill in order to appear. 

 

The only person who was potentially in trouble before today was Bobrova but she's covered by that meldonium amnesty as well, looking at the terms laid out now.

[Yatagarasu]

 

1 hour ago, Moria Polonius said:

 If they do choose to go, what rules will apply to who can compete, will "Olympic Athletes from Russia" inherit Russia's slots or will they be treated as a new country with one skater allowed? Something else entirely? 

 

If they choose not to go, which seems very likely, will their slots be redistributed to skaters from other countries? Is there an alternate list? 

 

To answer some of this for you here - yes, they inherit Russia's slots. As per the ruling we had today

 

Quote

It can only consider athletes who have qualified according to the qualification standards of their respective sport.

 

so it remains as it was. The Team event will also go on, though they would be Team OAR now.

 

Quote

These invited athletes will participate, be it in individual or team competitions, in the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 under the name “Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR)”.

 

In re to an alternate list - I don't know, I am not sure it's all that likely right now, the concession with the name of Russia and all but anyway, in case they do not go, yes, the team event slot would go to Australia, that is next in line. I am not sure about the individual events, considering that the qualifications are per ISU rules and the placements were what they were at both the Worlds in Helsinki and Nebelhorn, but maybe they'd also go by the same idea of who's next in line, goes.

[yuzuangel]

I haven't done much research into this issue nor read most of the discussion so forgive me if I fudge a few things...but my two cents is that this is as good of a result as could have happened. The clean athletes will get to compete as Russians, just not under the Russian flag. They can even compete in the team event under a neutral flag. So I really hope they will because otherwise it's not a competition, and whoever wins will not be seen as the true deserving OGM (at least in the ladies' discipline, and maybe team and pairs) -- just like how Mary Lou Retton's win at the 1984 Summer Olympics will always have an asterisk. 

 

However, if the doping scandal is anything like the forced doping campaigns in East Germany where you had athletes retiring at young ages, having miscarriages, giving birth to deformed babies, and suffering lifelong repercussions, I could see that the IOC did what it had to do. Unfortunately, the clean athletes end up being treated like collateral damage. But I get the impression that some people are so caught up with seeing it as a punishment inflicted out of revenge, and of forced doping as an unfair advantage rather than a violation of human rights, that they forget about the athletes who had to take these drugs who are the true victims here. And the bigger picture is to send a message that might prevent even one more athlete from any country from being forced to dope in the future. Again, I don't know if it's nearly as bad in terms of severity or scale as past doping scandals, but if it is, then it's something that should be stopped with any legal/safe method possible. Especially since the effects of many of these drugs take years or even decades to become apparent.

[micaelis]

59 minutes ago, yuzuangel said:

Again, I don't know if it's nearly as bad in terms of severity or scale as past doping scandals, but if it is, then it's something that should be stopped with any legal/safe method possible. Especially since the effects of many of these drugs take years or even decades to become apparent.

As far as I can say, this is the largest blanket penalty ever in sport, where an entire nation is banned.  True, there is the fact that individual athletes can elect to compete, although considering it's the Russian system involved there may not be much individual choice allowed.  As far as historical precedent, the one I can think of, insofar as it was against an individual who had become an icon of his sport, is the penalty leveled against Lance Armstrong, where he was stripped of all his Tour de France wins when conclusive evidence was discovered that showed a systematic doping use over what seems to have been the entirety of his Tour de France career.  In terms of the prominence of the penalized athlete, the Armstrong case, I think, remains the benchmark.  In baseball there is another famous affair, though this was for gambling rather than doping, and that's the banning of Pete Rose, who was functioning as player and manager for the Cincinnati Reds at the time.  Subsequently, as part of a rule made across the board for individuals who had been banned from baseball, as was the case with Rose, election to the Baseball Hall of Fame was also banned.  Those are the two cases I can think of where the individuals involved had extremely high prominence in their sport.  The blanket banning of Russia is unprecedented.  What most intrigues me is how long will the ban continue. Will it continue into the 2020 Tokyo games and possibly beyond.  In reading over the decision handed down I didn't see any indication of how long the ban was to extend.  If anybody else knows the answer to that, please post the information.  What does remain is that Russian sport tonight exists in a limbo quite simply of its own making.  The rules about doping have been on the books for ages and all the evidence indicates that the Russian sports operations were geared to systematically circumvent those rules.  As has been noted, it's the innocent athletes who are now suffering.  One other point - this is not the greatest crisis the Olympics have faced.  The 1980 boycott of the summer games in Moscow by the United States and its allies, and the payback boycott by the Soviet Union and its allies of the 1984 summer games in Los Angeles have cast a permanent shadow over the achievements by the individual athletes of those two Olympiads.  All of this goes to show that politics is no stranger to the Olympics and to international athletic competition in general.  There have been proposals in the past to remove all national paraphernalia from international competition, meaning no flags, no anthems, none of that.  These proposals have essentially gone nowhere.  What happens now as we approach PC we can only watch and hope.  The difference between the situation this time and what occurred in the 1980s is that the initial boycott by the Western nations of the Moscow games was a response to Russia's invasion of Afghanistan, and the boycott by the Soviets and their allies was payback for 1980.  In short, the situation was precipitated by situations that had nothing to do with sport.  What we have now is unprecedented.

[WinForPooh]

This does seem like the best they could've hoped for. Still... I feel bad for the athletes. You don't dream of hearing 'Olympic athlete from Russia *your name*' when you work your butt off to be the best, you dream of hearing 'Representing Russia'. Zhenya is the best in the world at what she does now and she might not hear that. That's sad.

 

Now I wonder what they will choose to do. If that report about neutral kit designs being ordered for the athletes is true, then hopefully they'll still get to compete. Whatever the decision is, I hope it will be official so that the responsibility of making it won't rest with the athletes themselves. That would be just too unfair.

[freeyafanfan]

I really hope they decide to go and that the government and the officials won't tell them not to go.. if anything, not being able to go to the olympics after you trained so hard for it all these years is just...  at least they will still say olympic athletes from Russia...

[Hannah]

1 hour ago, micaelis said:

What most intrigues me is how long will the ban continue. Will it continue into the 2020 Tokyo games and possibly beyond.  In reading over the decision handed down I didn't see any indication of how long the ban was to extend.  If anybody else knows the answer to that, please post the information.  

 

From Zhukov and Smirnov interview yesterday it seems that if Russia agrees to all the conditions including money issues, than Russian team ban will be over after the Oly games and they will even be able to bring russian flag to the closing ceremony. 

[katonice]

 

[Altie]

About the doping at Sotchi, the documentary "Icarus" on Netflix is very eye-opening (and can be watched as a real-life thriller, bette than Hollywood, it's incredible).

[Lunna]

1 час назад, Altie сказал:

About the doping at Sotchi, the documentary "Icarus" on Netflix is very eye-opening (and can be watched as a real-life thriller, bette than Hollywood, it's incredible).

Didn't watch it but I can say that it's so easy to twist the facts nowdays so I don't believe any eye-opening films. As I also don't believe that only Russia is bad here. Athlets get tested during different comps during season so this whole mess sounds like pure politics to me. But I also don't say that Russian officials are innocent cuz we ended up in this situation. In the end it's the innocent athletes who must deal with it - that's the part I'm mostly angry about.

[ralucutzagy]

 

[ralucutzagy]