Dear CAS: With Flurry of Letters, Russia May Delay Olympic Ban

Without a resolution, Russian officials, Russian uniforms and the Russian flag could be permitted in Tokyo, and the I.O.C. would face another fraught and fractious buildup to a Games because of the seemingly endless fallout from a scandal that is now in its fifth year.

Before the start of the Rio de Janeiro Olympics, and only months after word of Russian cheating at the 2014 Sochi Games became public, the I.O.C. president, Thomas Bach, told international sports federations to make their own decisions on the eligibility of individual Russian athletes. Two years later, at the Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, the I.O.C. decided to bar the Russian Olympic Committee and any symbols related to the country. That didn’t stop Russia from sending one of its biggest contingents to a Games, with its participants competing under the label “Olympic Athlete From Russia.”

Some national Olympic committees, including Britain’s, were furious with the accommodation.

“Our support is for the fullest possible sanctions to be taken against Russia at Tokyo 2020,” Hugh Robertson, the chairman of the British Olympic Association, said in December after WADA decided against imposing a blanket ban on Russian athletes. “At the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Games, Team G.B. athletes competed against a Russian team in all but name. This should not happen again.”

The current punishment against Russia, which on paper is the strictest ever issued, was imposed after the World Anti-Doping Agency determined Russian officials had manipulated and erased data that might have finally allowed doping investigators to confirm the identities of potentially hundreds of drug cheats.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/28/sports/olympics/russia-olympic-ban-cas.html