The IOC decision - (just) my reflections and opinion ...

Some people aren't really thinking clearly about the IOC decision to delegate decision making to the governing bodies.  Some track and field athletes in particular have made outspoken statements against the Russians and the IOC supporting a blanket ban and saying that the IOC has fudged matters.  I can  understand why people who have been disadvantaged by doping cheats in the past may react this way, but they aren't being wholly fair and seeing the complete picture.  This is not a single factor argument, it involves a complex judgement and there is no unique answer.  The IOC had to deliver justice, not revenge, and they were put in an impossible situation by WADA, who bungled their investigations and left things too late.  Yes, Russia should pay, and the national sanctions imposed are strong and clearly targeted.  But how to deliver quality justice to all the individual athletes, clean and otherwise?  This should have been WADA's focus.

There are enormous problems with the idea of a blanket ban.  In what other context of justice would you presume guilt rather than innocence?  Expect innocent individuals to take the same punishment as those who are deliberately culpable?  Even war criminals are given a fair trial - and they stand in the dock as individuals.  

WADA has taken too little time to gather and analyse the Rodchenkov evidence, and to judge the outcome.  The quality of the evidence is questionable - anecdotal, over reliant on one source, a lack of triangulating evidence from multiple sources.  A lack of criticality in interrogating Rodchenkov's claims.  WADA needed to understand the limitations of their data, to verify their findings and to define the scope of their work more clearly.  They also needed to take a more thorough approach to accessing and analysing the data in the hands of the sports' governing bodies.  Some of the report was sloppily completed - for example the use of the term 'all sports' when there are ten of the Olympic sports that are not even mentioned.

Track and field athletics has huge problems - and not just in Russia.  There are approximately 320 athletes currently serving sanctions for drug abuse, from many different countries.  Of course the IAAF was forced to take drastic action - their sport is, sadly, corrupt.  However, I would add the caveat, have other countries been subjected to the same scrutiny as Russia?  There has been a witch hunt against Russia.  Is the quality of justice truly equal across all countries?  Blanket justice has only weakened the IOC, IAAF and WADA - because there is no longer a level playing field between Russian athletes and the rest of the world.  WADA can only do its job on the level of the individual athlete.

Is it possible, given the limitations of the evidence, to make judgements across all sports disciplines that are fair to the individuals involved?  And - there's the rub - if the investigation's conclusions are correct, and the Russian doping labs are all corrupt, how can Russia prove the innocence of its clean athletes?  This is the strongest card the advocates of a full ban have to play.  But, fortunately for the ten sports that are not mentioned in the McLaren report, there are other sources of data besides those nationally collected.  This is why the IOC has had to turn to the sports' governing bodies - only they can answer the question of whether an individual athlete is clean or not, by scrutiny of their internationally collected doping records.

What most sources are failing to point out is that this situation questions the competence of WADA.  Isn't it their job to draw judgements on individual athlete cases?  Isn't collecting data on the athletes, and monitoring standards of scrutiny around the world, what they should have been doing all along?  Why has it taken them until now, precisely the most disruptive moment they could have chosen, to investigate and publish their findings?  Does the report comment on lessons learned, and identify best practice that can be adopted in other cases?  Why did they have to wait for a whistleblower to come forward before they questioned the Russian system?  And what implications does this have for the standard of their work in other territories?

In the end, WADA messed this up, and may well have let cheating athletes off the hook.  They left the playing field way too open, and asked the IOC to do too much in too short a period of time.  All that the IOC could fairly and practically do with such short notice was to fudge and to delegate the decision to the governing bodies, who are the ones with the evidence that WADA should have been interrogating and analysing all along.  Russia must bear responsibility for its corrupt and ineffective anti-doping standards, but the buck should stop with WADA and clean athletes should not have to suffer.

There must be further work done before the next Olympics to improve the quality of data collected by WADA, the process, principles and ethics of their systems and the fairness and effectiveness of their work.  Russia must also take responsibility and clean up its act totally.  The rest of the world should also stand up and assist WADA and the IOC.

Just my opinion.