BY TIM PARSONS
Over 30 athletes from six different sports could be banned from competing at the Rio Games, Olympic chiefs have said.
The announcement comes following wide testing by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of 454 selected doping samples from the 2008 Games in Beijing. Incredibly, the Committee is still awaiting results of 250 retests from the 2012 Olympics in London. All of those tests are samples from the 30 or more athletes from the six countries who may be facing bans. The overall aim is to prevent athletes from those six different sport from taking part in Rio. The Committee are also out to find new drug cheats in a strong clampdown against drugs in world sports.
The IOC said the retests were conducted using the very latest scientific analysis methods”All these measures are a powerful strike against the cheats we do not allow to win,” IOC president Thomas Bach said in a press release.
“They show once again that dopers have no place to hide. We keep samples for 10 years so that the cheats know that they can never rest.
“By stopping so many doped athletes from participating in Rio, we are showing once more our determination to protect the integrity of the Olympic competition.”
The IOC stressed that the retests were focused on athletes who could potentially take part in Rio. Twelve affected national Olympic associations would be informed in the coming days.
However, the Committee added that it would not be revealing the names of athletes who had returned adverse findings until B-samples had been tested and individuals informed. The 30 plus athletes from the six different sports will be quaking in their boots if they know they were on drugs or may have had traces of banned substances in their system at the time of the testing. It also sends out a message to current athletes hoping to take par and make a mark in Rio, that they will be found out and banned , if aught on drugs.
Re-testing of samples from the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics will resume shortly. Last week, a whistle blower alleged that a Russian whistle blower covered up cheats in Sochi, a claim vigorously denied by Russian authorities. Drug cheats pervade many sports, as they attempt to gain an unfair advantage over their honest competitors.
BREACHES
The latest measures taken by the IOC result from recent anti doping breaches committed by Russian and Kenyan sportsmen in recent months. Russia is one of the six countries whose sportsmen are to be banned from participating in the Rio Games.
The detected breaches led to a ban on Russia from athletics competition in November following a World Anti-Doping Agency (Wada) commission report recommended the sanction. Russia’s Athletic Federation conceded the guilt of its shameful competitors, with its sports minister ,Vitaly Mutko, unreservedly apologetic this week stating that Russia was ”very sorry” and ”ashamed”of cheating athletes who were not caught by its anti-doping systems.
However, Mutko spoke up for innocent athletes, arguing that a failure to lift the ban for the Rio Games would be “unfair and disproportionate” and that clean athletes should not be punished. He is absolutely right that innocent athletes should not suffer for the offenses of cheats from their country, though it seems the Commission’s stance is to make the country pay for its failings in detecting their cheats before their appearance on the international stage. The 30 athletes or more from the six different countries have caused the Rio ban likely to be imposed on innocent sportsmen from those countries.
