Russian Doping Scandal: IOC Had Chance to Make Bold Statement and Blew It
For all its championing of “higher, faster stronger”, the one comparative that few have had occasion to attach to the International Olympic Committee is “braver.”
Rooted as it is in old world blue bloods and augmented by former sportsmen and women co-opted to further the mythology, the membership of the IOC has whistled past many a graveyard over the years in order to maintain the franchise’s iconic status.
Sunday, it whistled past Russia and Vladimir Putin, and his twisted ministry of sport and his government-corrupted dope testers — giving new meaning to the term “laboratory rats” — and his sample-switching spy agency and his master plan to make world athletic dominance, by whatever means, an extension of his state’s arrogant trampling of all opposition in the political arena.
In the end, the IOC caved, as it always does, defaulting to whatever compromise it could safely adopt without offending a superpower.
