Russia Banned From Winter Olympics by I.O.C | Hacker News Reader

Russia Banned From Winter Olympics by I.O.C

nytimes.com

48 pointskoolba32 comments

> “Everyone is talking about how to punish Russia, but no one is talking about how to help Russia,” Mr. Smirnov said, sipping a hot beverage in the lobby of the Lausanne Palace Hotel before delivering his final appeal to officials that afternoon.

This quote is really kind of amazing.

Well, let's ask just that question. How do you help Russia?

The drug testing and general doping corruption is seemingly top-down, not bottom-up. I don't see the Kremlin saying "sorry we got caught everyone, we'll play fair with everyone else from now on."

Would be so kind and elaborate a bit on why do you see it as "amazing"?

god I mean it's everything from the guy's name to the setting ('sipping a hot beverage' in a 'palace hotel') compared to the content of his actual quote, which is incredibly presumptuous.

I don't see anything wrong with the guy's name... And for the rest of it - it's a a reporter who tried to paint the picture with words, so forgive me if I see it differently

If you have not done so, check out the documentary “Icarus” on Netflix. Many of the characters in this story appear there; one of them is now in FBI witness protection.

One of the best documentaries I have ever watched, I was riveted from start to finish.

I was not. I was only riveted from the halfway point to finish. For anyone that does watch it, don't give up based on the first half alone which is more about biking and only tangentially related to the actual Olympic scandal.

I'm a cyclist so the first bit was interesting enough. More interesting in retrospect, from a film nerd perspective, is to watch for the moments where you can tell he changed the entire direction of the film. I think i was about 10 minutes in or so when it occurred to me that things were moving pretty quickly if this was going to be a feature length documentary about self-doping.

Yes, that was an amazing documentary. Certainly not what I expected when going in. It makes me think that this is a laughably minor 'punishment.' Ban Russia from all Olympic events, Winter and especially Summer (the one people actually watch) for 40 years or until Putin and his cronies are no longer in office. Simple. They've been doing this since the late 1960s, so should be suspended at least as long or at least until they have gotten rid of the people responsible. Anything less is simply nonsense. Who would think that they would take a single sitting-out of the Winter games as their punishment and not immediately re-dedicate themselves to cheating as aggressively as they can?

The sad thing is that I am sure there are plenty of very capable Russian athletes caught up in all of this, and their achievements are completely unreliable because for all anyone can tell they would have lost handily every medal attained since the late 60s if not for cheating.

I see three ways Russia will react to this. One is to feign injured innocence and boycott the Olympics by not sending any un-uniformed athletes. Another is to grudgingly accept the punishment and participate without their flag. The first is an escalation of the conflict, taking the Russia vs West dynamic up another notch. The second way is a conciliatory step that underscores that Russia erred but still wants to be part of the world community. Either scenario is likely, depending on how far Russian decision-makers get tilted in either direction.

Then there is the fun third way - double down on the ethically suspect. Have a pet ally like Belarus issue citizenship to all Russian althletes, then participate under a Belarus flag. Westerners would pop a vein.

> Russia’s Olympic team has been barred from the 2018 Winter Games [...] The country’s government officials are forbidden to attend

> Some Russian officials have threatened to boycott if the I.O.C. delivered such a severe punishment

I don't understand. So they threatened to boycott if they weren't allowed? Or am I reading words wrong?

> I don't understand. So they threatened to boycott if they weren't allowed? Or am I reading words wrong?

Probably, they wanted to say that it does not make sense to participate if anyway you have no chances to win. Or maybe it does not make sense to participate as a no-name. Or, third hypothesis, it does not make to participate as a second-class athlete.

Boycott means they are not letting any of their athletes participate, including the ones who can do so under a neutral flag.

Seems like an appropriate punishment.

Russia's state-enabled cheating at the Sochi games was extraordinary. It's the kind of cheating that the monitoring agencies are not equipped to fight. You can't go up against a state with all its resources. So banning Russia from participating is the correct response.

Unfortunately, Olympics, as a world monopoly, have been very important for and under strong pressure of politics for the whole period of its existence. Of course, most people do not like to see how sport is being converted into a politician battlefield and manipulated by world powers. Yet, nobody knows how to remove this strong dependence. Maybe one solution would be to have two independent Olympic games in hope that they will compete for the spectators and not for the attention of politicians?

Title should say Russia has been banned from 2018 Winter Games. What a stain on the competition and elite sports!

Reason: state-organized manipulation of urine samples in Olympic testing labs during the 2014 Games in Sochi. The facts were mostly known a year ago; the punishment aimed at Russia is new, just a few months ahead of the Games in South Korea.

To be clear, what is the "stain" you speak of? The ban or the cheating?

The insufficient bribes.

Both. First any cheating athlete of course, and second the IOC having to ban an entire nation.

I'm sure there are many current Russian athletes who had nothing to do with the doping scandal. I'm going to miss the Russian ice-hockey team and figure skaters, for instance.

It might not work for hockey, but individual Russian athletes can lobby for the right to compete:

> In barring Russia’s team, Olympic officials left the door open for some Russian athletes. Those with histories of rigorous drug testing may petition for permission to compete in neutral uniforms.

Not just 2014. The IOC pulled the historical samples of urine kept for exactly this sort of reason and verified extensive cheating across every event, every Olympics, going back to 1967. There has not been an honest Russian competitor in the Olympics during the lifetime of most of the people reading this.

Can you provide a cite for this? I wouldn't be surprised, but I can't find anything at hand.

There were no Olympic Games in 1967.

There are no such retests going back 50 years. "The IOC can hold the bottles for up to 10 years, and can thaw the urine for a retest any time during that window." [1] After that window, it's gone.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2016/05/22/ho...

> Title should say Russia has been banned from 2018 Winter Games. What a stain on the competition and elite sports!

It would have been but I stuck to the original title at the time I published the link. Looks like NYT has since updated it to "Russia Banned From Winter Olympics by I.O.C.".

Thanks, we've updated it here.

Still, they've only been banned from the 2018 Games, not from Winter Olympics in general.

But why even allow them to compete under neutral flag, if this isn't political?

Institutional misbehavior is punished institutionally. That seems fair. But, if some individuals can demonstrate compliance separate from the institutional misbehavior, they can avoid the institutional punishment. That seems fair, too.

Had there been a blanket ban on all Russian athletes, that would have been seen as a politically-motivated decision. It would have been interpreted by many third-party observers as Westerners using their clout to mess with a geopolitical foe.

Right now it's about a non-state actor (the Olympic committee) doing what amounts to disciplinary action within it's own ranks. From that point of view, it's purely administrative, and keeps politics out of it (to a degree).

> It would have been interpreted by many third-party observers as Westerners using their clout to mess with a geopolitical foe.

Most non-Western aligned countries already see it like that.

Participating under a neutral flag and not representing your country that sponsored you throughout your career is a no-no to a lot of nations.

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