Russia banned from 2018 Olympics for widespread doping program
Russia’s flag and anthem will be absent from February’s PyeongChang Games in South Korea as consequence for widespread doping.
(原文取自华盛顿邮报）
当地时间12月5日，国际奥委会在瑞士洛桑会议上经过讨论最终决定将取消俄罗斯代表团参赛资格。因俄罗斯“系统性操纵反兴奋剂工作”，禁止该国代表团参加将于明年2月在韩国平昌举行的冬奥会，但符合条件的俄运动员仍可以“奥林匹克运动员”的名义参赛。他们的运动服上只能标注“来自俄罗斯的奥林匹克运动员”，颁奖时奏国际奥委会会歌、升国际奥委会会旗。
The International Olympic Committee banned the Russian federation from the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea on Tuesday, while leaving the door open for individual Russian athletes to compete, in a historic act of punishment for widespread doping Olympic officials believe was supported by the Russian government.Russia’s flag and anthem will be absent from February’s PyeongChang Games, the IOC decided, as penalties for a doping regime that included the sabotage of drug testing during the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi.
Russian athletes who can prove their innocence of drug cheating will be permitted to compete in PyeongChang under the designation of an “Olympic Athlete from Russia (OAR).” The Olympic anthem will be played in any ceremony for medals won by these athletes, and Russia’s official medal count for the games will stand at zero.
In a Tuesday evening news conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, IOC President Thomas Bach called Russia’s doping system “an unprecedented attack on the integrity of the Olympic games and sports.”
“This decision should draw a line under this damaging episode and serve as a catalyst for a more effective and a more robust anti-doping system,” Bach said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and IOC President Thomas Bach during the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games. (Barbara Walton/EPA)
瑞士原联邦主席施密德领导的委员会提交《施密德报告》，证实了俄罗斯代表团在索契冬奥会期间存在系统性滥用兴奋剂和操纵反兴奋剂系统情况。该根据这一报告，执委会决定取消俄罗斯代表团参赛资格以及奥委会资格。《施密德报告》详述了俄罗斯在2014年索契冬奥会期间帮助其运动员掩盖使用违禁药物的行为，包括更换尿样和修改药物检测结果，证实俄罗斯违反反兴奋剂条例并操纵反兴奋剂体系。
俄罗斯奥委会主席茹科夫随后在俄奥委会官网发表声明，对违反兴奋剂一事向国际奥委会表示歉意。但是在茹科夫的声明中，他否认了俄罗斯在2014年索契冬奥会上存在“系统性”的服用禁药行为。
Bach was joined Tuesday by Samuel Schmid, the former president of Switzerland, who led a commission investigating the allegations against Russia for the IOC. Schmid’s report confirmed “the systemic manipulation of the anti-doping rules and system in Russia,” he said.
A nation’s Olympic team had never been banned for doping, or any competitive violation. The IOC has issued politically motivated bans in the past, such as those imposed against Germany and Japan during World War II, and against South Africa during apartheid.
Russian lawmakers and other officials quickly rejected the IOC decision as politically motivated.
“We won’t apologize,” said Pyotr Tolstoy, a leading member of the Russian State Duma, Russia’s lower house of legislature. “We won’t apologize to Bach, to the former president of Switzerland, who prepared this report so sweetly. We have nothing to apologize for and neither do our athletes.”
Former Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko, whom the IOC banned for life from Olympic Games, did not reply to requests to comment. Mutko consistently has denied Russian government involvement in drug cheating, and told reporters at an event in Moscow last week promoting the 2018 World Cup in Russia that “there is no proof” of state-sponsored doping.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose spokesman did not reply to a request to comment Tuesday, previously had termed a potential ban as “humiliating,” and implied it would provoke a Russian boycott.
Bach, who has had a close relationship with Putin in the past, told reporters in Lausanne he had not discussed the IOC’s punishment with Putin. A delegation from Russia made a last-minute plea for leniency, Bach said, before the IOC’s executive board made its decision.“An Olympic boycott has never achieved anything,” Bach said. “I don’t see any reason for a boycott by the Russian athletes, because we will allow the clean Russian athletes to participate.”
Russia’s anti-doping agency has been suspended since 2015, calling into question how the IOC will verify athletes who have trained in Russia have done so without the assistance of banned substances.
To determine which Russian athletes will be allowed to compete, the IOC plans to establish an independent testing authority, Bach said, that will include officials from the World Anti-Doping Agency. The IOC fined Russia’s Olympic Committee $15 million, which it intends to use to pay for this independent testing authority, as well as for past investigations into Russian doping.
Anti-doping officials — some of whom heavily criticized the IOC for not levying a similar punishment before the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro — praised Tuesday’s decision.
“Over the past three years, a high-stakes game of chicken has been played between those willing to sacrifice the Olympic ideals by employing a state-directed doping program to cheat to win and, on the other side, athletes unwilling to stand silent while their hopes and dreams were stolen and the Olympic Games hijacked,” said Travis Tygart, chief executive of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. “Today the IOC listened to those who matter most — and clean athletes won a significant victory.”
2016年5月，俄罗斯前反兴奋剂实验室主任罗琴科夫（Grigoory Rodchenkov）向《纽约时报》爆料，在2014年索契冬奥会期间，俄罗斯政府展开了兴奋剂计划，反兴奋剂专家和情报人员将服用过药物的运动员的尿样换成几个月前采集的没有问题的尿样。
事情爆出后，和罗琴科夫关系密切的两位反兴奋剂部门的官员相继死亡，罗琴科夫为安全考虑，移居美国洛杉矶，目前受到联邦当局的保护。
The absence of Russian athletes would sap many events of top competitors. In the 2014 Winter Games in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Russia led the medal count, with 33 overall and 13 golds. But Russia’s success at those Olympics, according to former Moscow antidoping lab director Grigory Rodchenkov, came with some assistance behind the scenes.
Rodchenkov has said he oversaw a state-run doping system that provided hundreds of top athletes with banned performance-enhancing substances for years. When the Olympics came to Russian soil, according to Rodchenkov, he ran a clandestine effort, with the assistance of government agents, to replace tainted urine samples taken from cheating Russian athletes during the Sochi Games with clean urine samples he collected months before.
Rodchenkov’s testimony, bolstered by two other Russian whistleblowers, have been supported by a series of investigations by the World Anti-Doping Agency since late 2015 that have concluded more than 1,000 Russian athletes across at least 30 sports, including both summer and winter events, had been involved in doping that dated from at least 2011.
Russian sports ministry officials have apologized for widespread doping among their athletes, but forcefully have denied allegations of government involvement and painted Rodchenkov as a rogue actor.
Last month, a Russian court issued an arrest warrant for Rodchenkov, who fled the country for the United States in 2015 after two colleagues at Russia’s anti-doping agency died suddenly. Rodchenkov, who was the subject of the Netflix documentary “Icarus” earlier this year, is living somewhere in the United States under the protection of federal authorities.
Jim Walden, Rodchenkov’s lawyer, released a statement praising the IOC decision for sending “a powerful message that it will not tolerate state-sponsored cheating by any nation.”
“As the world has seen, Dr. Rodchenkov provided credible and irrefutable evidence of the Russian state-sponsored doping system,” Walden wrote. “Russia’s consistent denials lack any credibility, and its failure to produce all evidence in its possession only further confirms its high-level complicity.”Andrew Roth contributed to this report from Moscow.
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