Rachel Axon

USA TODAY Sports

In the face of calls to ban Russia from competing in the upcoming Rio Olympics, the International Olympic Committee on Sunday deferred decisions about the eligibility of the country’s athletes to the international federations that govern each sport.

The decision now moves the heavy lifting of determining whether individual athletes can meet the criteria set out by the IOC to demonstrate sufficient anti-doping records, a challenge for the international federations (IFs) as the IOC has advised reversing the presumption of innocence.

The IOC’s executive board made the decision that will certainly be unpopular in sport and anti-doping communities. The World Anti-Doping Agency, a group of 14 leaders of national anti-doping organizations and athletes worldwide had called for a collective ban.

“This is about doing justice to clean athletes all over the world,” IOC President Thomas Bach said. “In this way, we protect these clean athletes because of the high criteria we set to for all the Russian athletes. This may not please everybody on either side. … The result today is one which is respecting the rules of justice and which is respecting the right of all the clean athletes all over the world.”

The IOC’s decision presumes all Russian athletes entered into the Games are considered to be affected by a system that subverted and manipulated anti-doping rules.

That system was revealed most clearly in a WADA-commissioned report, which was led by Canadian lawyer Richard McLaren and released Monday, showed even more widespread doping and government involvement than was previously known.

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According to the IOC’s statement, Russian athletes “have to assume the consequences of what amounts to a collective responsibility in order to protect the credibility of the Olympic competitions, and the ‘presumption of innocence’ cannot be applied to them.”

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency was declared non-compliant in November, and more revelations about doping mean IFs cannot trust negative drug test results from that agency. WADA brought in UK Anti-Doping to take over testing in February, but a WADA report in June detailed attempts at obstruction, obfuscation and avoidance of drug testing.

The IOC said it would only accept entries from the Russian Olympic Committee if athletes could meet the following criteria:

Athletes must provide evidence to full satisfaction of their IF, which should consider reliable international tests and the specifics of the sport and rules

IFs seek from WADA the names and national federations implicated in the McLaren report and that nobody implicated in it be accepted to the Games

The ROC may not enter any athletes who have ever been sanctioned for doping

That last criteria is likely to be challenged as it is contrary to a previous decision from the Court of Arbitration for Sport. Alexander Zhukov, head of the Russian Olympic Committee, said his agency would not take a case to CAS on those grounds but that individual athletes could.

The IOC will accept the entry only if it meets those conditions and is upheld by a CAS expert.

Russia’s track and field athletes remain banned collectively after CAS upheld that decision by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) last week.

"They’re just making up rules as they go along, and it’s going to be unsatisfactory,” said Roger Pielke Jr., a University of Colorado professor whose book, The Edge: The War Against Cheating and Corruption in the Cutthroat World of Elite Sports, is due out in September.

“Trying to make sense of how things work in the funhouse mirrors will occupy folks for the next 12 days, but the reality is the IOC has ripped up the rules of sport governance and after Rio, which everybody is focused on, the real work will have to get done of putting the pieces back together.”

Decision draws sharp criticism

Though the IOC decision was made to attempt to find a balance between collective responsibility and individual justice — which has been the IOC’s stated goal in protecting clean athletes in and outside Russia — many see it as a punt by the movement’s most powerful organization.

The decision has drawn criticism from several national anti-doping organizations, athletes and anti-doping officials.

“Many, including clean athletes and whistleblowers, have demonstrated courage and strength in confronting a culture of state-supported doping and corruption within Russia,” said U.S. Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart in a statement. “Disappointingly, however, in response to the most important moment for clean athletes and the integrity of the Olympic Games, the IOC has refused to take decisive leadership. The decision regarding Russian participation and the confusing mess left in its wake is a significant blow to the rights of clean athletes.”

“The IOC has stated before that they believe anti-doping should be wholly independent, and that is in part why it is so frustrating that in this incredibly important moment, they would pass the baton to sports federations who may lack the adequate expertise or collective will to appropriately address the situation within the short window prior to the Games. The conflict of interest is glaring.”

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The decision creates further chaos with less than two weeks until the Rio Games open on Aug. 5. While some federations are likely equipped for such a review, others may face difficulty in that process.

Bach said some had begun the review process already, although it’s unclear if they had the criteria the IOC provided on Sunday.

“I think they will be able to produce their documents already in a couple of days,” he said.

Within hours of the IOC’s decision, the International Tennis Federation announced it had approved Russia’s entries for Rio.

The International Weightlifting Federation is considering banning the Russian team because of the number of positive tests it has faced, but leaders of the International Federation of Gymnastics and FINA, which governs swimming, have opposed a blanket ban.

The inconsistency from sport to sport and lack of resources of some IFs raised concerns about undertaking such a challenge in a short time period.

“I think that Thomas Bach turned his back on clean athletes today,” said Max Cobb, CEO of US Biathlon. “I think that the good news is that there are stronger anti-doping measures and tests in place than ever before, that sport is more controlled, the effort to forbid doping is more controlled than it’s ever been. But clearly, athletes cannot trust the IOC president to uphold the rights of clean athletes.”

System of widespread doping

The IOC found itself in this position after media reports and two investigations commissioned by WADA revealed a system of widespread doping and covering up of positive tests as anti-doping officials worked with government agencies to subvert the anti-doping system in the country.

The McLaren report confirmed allegations reported by 60 Minutes and the New York Times in May of doping of Russian athletes during the Sochi Olympics and the swapping out of dirty urine for clean urine with the help of the Federal Security Service.

It revealed a much larger doping system than had previously been known. Dubbed the Disappearing Positive Methodology in the report, the system included the Ministry of Sport, Center of Sports Preparation of the National Teams of Russia, the FSB and the Moscow and Sochi labs working together to cover up more than 600 positive drug tests in 29 Olympic sports from 2011 until August 2015.

The officials involved included a deputy sports minister who is on the executive board of the Russian Olympic Committee and a former staffer for the ROC.

The IOC noted that the McLaren report made no findings against the ROC as an institution.

The IOC waited to act until after it received a decision from CAS, which upheld the IAAF’s extension of a ban of Russia that had been in place since November when an independent commission report revealed widespread doping in Russian athletics.

That report was largely based on evidence provided by whistleblowers Vitaly and Yuliya Stepanov. Vitaly Stepanov was an employee of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency when he first took evidence to WADA in 2010. Yuliya Stepanova, an 800-meter runner, joined her husband’s efforts in 2013 after being suspended for irregularities with her athlete biological passport. Frustrated with a lack of progress with WADA, the Stepanovs shared their evidence with German broadcaster ARD, which aired a documentary on the allegations in late 2014.

The independent commission began investigating in January 2015, yet the McLaren report revealed the system of covering up positive tests continued to run for eight months while the country was under investigation.

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In banning Russia, the IAAF created a rule change to allow athletes to apply for exceptional eligibility if they could show they have been subject to an effective anti-doping system outside of Russia and had not been tainted by the Russian system.

Stepanova, who left Russia in 2014 and now lives in the United States, was the first to receive such eligibility. Long jumper Darya Klishina, who trains in Florida, is the only other Russian to be granted that status.

The IOC decided not to let Stepanova compete in Rio but has invited her and her husband to be the IOC’s guests.

The IOC’s ethics committee, which reviewed her case, considered that before she provided evidence of doping in Russia, Stepanova served a two-year ban for irregularities in her athlete biological passport and was part of the doping system for at least five years.

It cited the timing of when she came forward as a whistleblower, which was after “the system did not protect her any longer,” as a reason for not accepting her to compete in Rio.

Asked what message he thought Stepanova’s exclusion would send to athletes considering coming forward as whistleblowers, Bach said, “I think it will be an encouragement for all the future whistleblowers because there the ethics commission and its advice and the executive board has accepted this advice has balanced very well the whole CV of Mrs. Stepanova. They have appreciated that she was coming out, but also put it into the perspective of what happened in the five or six years before she was coming out and the timing of when she was coming out.”

Tygart was among many who disagreed with that assessment, saying, “In regard to Yuliya Stepanova, the decision to refuse her entry in to the Games is incomprehensible and will undoubtedly deter whistleblowers in the future from coming forward.”