Bach defends IOC decision not to ban Russian athletes

International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach used an interview with Germany's DPA news agency on Tuesday to strike back at his detractors, who have sharply criticized the organization and him personally over the decision.

"The IOC had to make a difficult decision," Bach told the agency. "We had to weigh up imposing punishment on a system and the extent to which you can hold athletes responsible for such a system."

The IOC decided at a meeting on Sunday to leave it up to the governing bodies of the sports represented at the summer Olympics to decide whether to allow Russian athletes to compete in Rio de Janeiro. This flew in the face of a report commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and published last week, which recommended that the IOC ban all Russian athletes from competing in Rio amid allegations of widespread, systematic doping in the country.

The 62-year-old German, whose organization has been accused of passing the buck to the individual sports' governing bodies, insisted that this amounted to a "balanced solution."

"On the one hand the athletes bear collective responsibility for the system. On the other hand it gives athletes the possibility to show, by clearing very high hurdles, they weren't involved in the system," he said.

"The international federations are responsible for the anti-doping system together with WADA 365 days of the year," Bach noted. "This means you have all the data on tests, biological passports or possible punishments."

Harting's criticism 'unacceptable'

Bach, who was a member of the West German fencing team that won gold in the foil event at the 1976 summer Games in Montreal, also responded directly to criticism from German Olympic discus champion, Robert Harting, who accused the IOC president of being "part of the doping system."

"It is an unacceptable lapse to insult someone who is not of the same opinion as you in such a manner," Bach said.

The IOC president also said he "strictly rejected" any suggestion that the IOC had gone easy on Russia due to his close relationship with the country's president, Vladimir Putin, pointing out that "the decision was taken unanimously by the IOC executive board."

He also reiterated the IOC's position that the anti-doping system must be made independent of sports organizations and said that he was pleased that the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which was conceived by the IOC now sanctions athletes who test positive for performance-enhancing drugs rather than the IOC itself.

'More to do'

"But there is still more to do," Bach said. "The whole system, who is responsible for what needs to be made transparent. This would also make it clear who is responsible for the laboratories, who is responsible for the checks, who is responsible for sanctioning and who is responsible for the whole time outside of the Olympics Games. And then you will find that the IOC is not responsible for everything and nor can it be."

So far, around 85 athletes from the 387-strong Russian Olympic team named last week have been banned from competing in Rio due to previous doping sanctions or after having been named in the WADA-commissioned report as being involved in doping.

Meanwhile, the CAS has announced that it has opened two temporary offices in Rio de Janeiro to handle doping cases at the Games, which kick off on August 5.

pfd/apc (dpa, SID, AP)