After a rash of athletes called out competitors as ‘drug cheats’ the IOC is urging athletes to respect each other.

“Clearly we want to encourage freedom of speech. But on the other hand of course the Olympics is about respecting others and respecting the right of others to compete,” said IOC spokesman Mark Adams according to media reports.

The plea follows a weekend of competition that witnessed two athletes forcefully and publicly shame competitors for past positive drug tests. Australian Mack Horton labeled Chinese swimmer Sun Yang a “drug cheat” and American Lilly King had similarly harsh words for Russian breaststroker Yulia Efimova.

Athletes taking matters into their own hands is a natural consequence of the IOC’s cowardly decision allowing most Russian athletes to participate in Rio, even after the country’s widespread, state-sponsored doping regime was exposed.

Efimova in particular is a lightning rod for controversy. She served a 16-month ban from late 2013 to early 2015 and more recently tested positive for meldonium, a substance only banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) at the beginning of 2016. WADA said it was uncertain how long traces of the substance can stay in the body and thus could not definitively say whether Efimova took it after it was listed as banned. WADA is currently undertaking further studies to determine this.

The IOC attempted to ban athletes that had previously been suspended for drug violations, but the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld Efimova’s appeal saying athletes could not be banned twice for the same doping offence.

The legal wrangling was predictable after the IOC failed to implement a blanket ban and left the door open Russian athletes, even those who had previously been caught cheating, to compete in Rio.

The IOC’s job is to protect clean athletes from having to face drug-enhanced competitors. When athletes under as much suspicion as Efimova are allowed to compete, other athletes have every right to draw attention to the fact that she has been suspended for doping, then tested positive for another banned substance, and that her country’s sports federation orchestrated a massive doping regime and cover-up.

No doubt athletes would much rather be focusing on their own performances than worrying about those in the next lane, but when the IOC fails to do its job, what choice do they have? They can stand by quietly as those who have cheated in the past snatch up medals, or they can draw attention to it in hopes of cleaning up their sport.

In what is the biggest indictment of the IOC’s handling of doping, the task of sticking up for clean sport has fallen largely to the athletes themselves. It is more than a little ironic for the IOC to speak of respect, when it has lost pretty much everybody’s.