Such have been the scandals surrounding the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in recent times that it has had to be seen to be capable of taking the toughest possible action and the line they have pursued with Russia is the outcome.
Given the importance of the Olympics in that part of the world, however, the implications may go beyond sporting considerations and it is all too easy to see how this will play in a country whose citizens and, more particularly, leaders need little encouragement to see themselves as being victimised by the west.
In those terms the timing of the confirmation that a ban on Russian athletes competing under the banner of their national federation has been upheld may have been close to unavoidable but it could not have been worse.
Doubtless it was no coincidence that Panorama, the BBC’s longest-established documentary vehicle, broadcast its latest edition the night before this verdict was announced as it examined some very serious accusations levelled at the President of the IAAF.
The sight of Sebastian Coe refusing to answer questions put to him by the presenter of a programme with a pedigree which dates back to having been on air before the former Olympic champion was born, made for extremely uncomfortable viewing and it takes no great leap of imagination to work out how this will play in Moscow.
The consistent claim of Russian officialdom has been that they deserved no greater scrutiny than the likes of the Jamaicans, Kenyans and Ethiopians who have also been accused of being blighted by endemic doping problems.
The counter argument, that there is a significant difference, is predicated upon analysis of the level of state complicity involved, in itself a description that merits consideration in the context of the absence of resource being invested in establishing robust anti-doping programmes in many other countries.
Clearly there are highly credible indications that the Russian authorities have not been as cooperative in seeking to address the issues raised in relation to their anti-doping procedures as they claim to have been. Yet what are we or, more importantly in this context, the Russians to make of the excuses repeatedly put up by Coe’s apologists for his failure to have been aware of what was happening in his sport during the eight years he was on the IAAF board before he won election to its presidency campaigning on a manifesto of being the man to clean things up?
What exacerbates all of this right now is that it is happening just as Russian paranoia is almost certainly being heightened on other sporting fronts.
Going by the reporting of events in France during Euro 2106 by British agencies there was serious trouble being caused by Coe’s fellow Englishmen even before their team’s meeting with Russia at that tournament and there has been more involving them since, yet while both countries were warned regarding the behaviour of their supporters, it was the Russians who were given a suspended disqualification from the competition.
It does not take Pravda-style journalism to see how this can be portrayed as being a case of one law for the West and another for the demonised Russians.
Furthermore, at a time when Russian Maria Sharapova battling against a two year ban from tennis for what she continues to claim was a mistaken use of drugs, yesterday’s announcement that, after years of campaigning by confessed drugs cheat David Millar which should have minimised any ignorance of what is at stake, his fellow Briton Simon Yates had been given a four month ban for a “non-intentional” anti-doping violation, will be readily picked up on by her compatriots.
The rights and wrongs of each case must, of course, be examined separately, but for all that attempts are apparently being made to ensure that Russian athletes who can prove themselves to be clean will be allowed to take part in the Rio Olympics, the impression given of a blanket ban on those from an entire country is an exceptional measure.
This might feel different if we could be more confident in what is happening in the rest of the world. However both currently, in the way Coe refused to answer Panorama presenter Mark Daly’s questions and historically, in the knowledge that there was, for example, no Eastern European among the Canadian, American and British runners who contested the 1988 Olympic 100 metres final that has been dubbed “the dirtiest race in history”, there is a real sense that people reared in the cold war era are finding it all too easy to pin blame on those dastardly Russians in bidding to deflect from wider problems.
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