Gaz from Foxton Beach summed it up best.

He texted Breakfast this morning with this succinct summary of the situation.

"The IOC have no balls and no guts."

How can anyone disagree?

But it was so predictable.

The IOC Executive Committee, facing what was arguably the biggest decision in the history of the organisation, didn't even get on planes to meet in person to make the call on whether or not Russia's entire delegation should be banned from the Rio games.

Instead, they discussed the issued in a telephone conference, and even invited the head of the Russian Olympic Committee to take part in the discussion.

ONE News Presenter and columnist Peter Williams. Source: 1 NEWS

Who is running this show?

Let's just remember a few highly relevant facts.

The International Olympic Committee own the Olympic Games.

They make the rules about who takes part and who doesn't. They decide which sports should be there and which shouldn't. They can issue and withdraw invitations and there should be no comeback against such a decision.

So for them to kick the can down the road and leave any decisions to International Sports Federations is a remarkable abrogation of responsibility to every clean athlete in the world.

The IOC says it has to think of natural justice. In other words, it doesn't think it should ban a clean Russian athlete (is that an oxymoron?) just because others from the country may be on the juice.

Two questions then.

What about natural justice for the clean athletes from all around the world who have to compete alongside Russians?

And what about the natural justice for South African athletes with liberal and non racial beliefs between 1964 and 1988 but who were banned because their country wasn't allowed to compete as the IOC didn't approve of apartheid?

They make the rules about who takes part and who doesn't... They can issue and withdraw invitations and there should be no comeback against such a decision. - Peter Williams

Isn't this an almost identical situation, albeit on a different issue?

Remember, the doping in Russia was state sanctioned. According to the World Anti Doping Agency, the Ministry of Sport was intimately involved not just in the doping itself, but also in the cover-up.

So it's a government policy, like apartheid was.

South Africa was ousted from the Olympic movement for over 30 years.

The world, generally, approved because of the government policy. Nobody ever thought about the collateral damage to the athletes of the time.

In fact, when South African expats, like Zola Budd, moved countries they were still treated as pariahs by many.

All fair minded followers of sport believe that Russia should have been banned.

Even Barry Maister, a 1976 gold hockey medallist and an IOC member from New Zealand (but not in the inner sanctum, the Executive Committee) says that he personally believed Russia should have been banned.

He admitted clean athletes would be collateral damage but that was the price that had to be paid to try and rid sport of the doping scourge.

If those comments ever make their way to IOC headquarters in Lausanne then one imagines Mr Maister's prospects of cracking the big league of Olympic administrators have been diminished.

That would be a pity. He's a man of honesty and integrity prepared to stand up for what he believes is right.

He must be applauded for saying what every fair minded sports fan the world over, even in Russia, is thinking.