Okay, apologies if you felt I was detracting from your original point.greg wrote:I appreciate your advice, however I believe we keep deviating from the initial statement which sparked off this discussion. What I said was I quote "the WORST robbery IMO was when the Russian Athletics team was collectively banned from participation in the Olympic games" and that was my response to the OP question regarding worst robbery of this Olympics..No more and no less...
What I MEANT: IAAF was wrong issuing the blanket ban. They should have done IMO what all other international federations have, they had enough time for that. They showed however no intention to as opposed to all other international governing bodies. They took the easiest path by collectively punishing a group of athletes (about 70 athletes) including a large number of clean ones. I think it should be clear now what I said and I meant..
However I fundamentally disagree with your point of view. In fact WADA recommended the IOC to place a blanket ban over all sports, but IOC decided to allow the respective governing bodies to make that decision themselves. It was an opportunity for the IOC to take a firm stance on doping, and many believe that the IOC took the cowards way out. As far as I know the IAAF and IWF were the only sporting bodies which placed a blanket ban over all athletes, with most banning only partial % of athletes, with a very few sporting bodies making no bans.
The problem is, and I see exactly where you're coming from, we just don't know with any real certainty which athletes are genuinely clean. There was in my opinion most likely athletes which were unable to compete that were clean due to the blanket ban. Due to the magnitude of the state sponsored doping, it's conceivable that every athlete is dirty. Your completely wrong that they had enough time to review each case individually. The findings were published to the public 18 July, and opening ceremony of the games was 5 August. WADA probably first became aware of the claims a few weeks prior to the 18th, and the registration deadline for the Olympics was probably a few weeks before the opening ceremony, so by my estimation the IOC had less than 3 weeks to investigate 70 cases (and that's just athletics). The IOC however did give every athlete the opportunity to prove their innocence prior to the games. Many applied for entry into the games, under extenuating circumstances but only one was successful.
The problem is, Russia did the dirty. I can't even call it cheating, it's much worse than that. The world has to take a hard stance. How on earth can you let athletes compete which could well have cheated the whole time? What message does that send out? At the end of the day it's not the clean athletes fault, but did they know it was going on? Are they an accessory? These aren't rhetorical questions - I genuinely want to know. The other problem is that RUSADA haven't admitted to what they've done. If anything they've denied it. It's completely shameless. They have to change the culture in Russia, and until they do, their athletes cannot be trusted in the sport - because they will lie and cheat.
