IOC chief slams sports court ruling on Russian athletes
The President of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach says a decision by the international sports court on the eligibility of Russian athletes to contest in the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea was “extremely disappointing”.
Bach said Sunday in Pyeongchang, the South Korean city that will host the winter games as of Friday, that the Court of Arbitration for Sport’s (CAS) midweek decision to lift IOC doping bans on 28 Russian athletes showed the global watchdog on sports was in urgent need of reforms.
"We feel that this decision shows the urgent need for reforms in the internal structure of CAS,” said Bach, adding, "And that means in particular that CAS has to change its structure in a way that it can better manage the quality and the consistency of its jurisdiction.”
CAS ruled Thursday that there was not enough evidence to back the bans imposed on the Russian athletes over involvement in doping.
The ruling would effectively make the IOC invite the athletes to Pyeongchang games and Bach said one such decision will be due "in the next couple of days." Russian authorities have announced that they would want to have 15 of the athletes in the winter games. The rest of the athletes have either been retired or are not accessible.
Russia, the dominant country in the previous round of Winter Olympics in Sochi in 2014, was expected to be represented by a total of 169 neutral athletes under a flag as "Olympic Athletes from Russia".
For the past several years, the IOC and other global sports authorities have accused Russia of running a government-sponsored doping system, a claim Russia denies in principle and says is partly politicized.
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