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Perdita Felicien, Karina LeBlanc blast IOC's decision not to ban Russia from Rio

andrew bucholtz

The International Olympic Committee's decision Sunday not to impose a blanket ban on Russian athletes over the country's massive state-sponsored doping program but instead leave it up to individual federations has received plenty of criticism around the world, with the likes of U.S. Anti-Doping Agency president Travis Tygart, English champion rower Sir Matthew Pinsent, and Scottish Olympian-turned-journalist Susan Egelstaff amongst those bashing them. There are plenty of Canadians upset about this too, with one of the strongest takes coming from Olympic hurdler turned CBC analyst Perdita Felicien. Felicien expressed strong disappointment on CBC Sunday morning:

Felicien then offered further criticism on her Twitter account:

Former Canadian soccer star Karina LeBlanc, who will be in Rio with the Yahoo Canada team as our Games expert, also had some thoughtful criticisms for the IOC Sunday. Here are her thoughts, as given to Yahoo Canada's Steve McAllister:

Another remarkable aspect of this is that the IOC decided to block Yulia Stepanova's bid to compete as a neutral athlete; she and her husband were the crucial whistleblowers who exposed this system. That's taken a ton of criticism, as has the decision to pass this to federations and arbitrators so soon before the Games. Canadian IOC member, Olympic broadcasting services chair and former World Anti-Doping Agency head Dick Pound has blasted this too:

Pound slammed the decision saying the IOC had a “huge opportunity to make a statement. It's been squandered”. On Bach and the IOC, he said it was “zero tolerance for doping, unless its Russia.”

Update: Canadian women's hockey player Hayley Wickenheiser also weighed in:

As did Canadian speed skater Catriona Le May Doan:

All these athletes make excellent cases for the problems with this decision, especially considering what we know about how widespread and how orchestrated the Russian doping program was (which even included a fake laboratory in Sochi). As Felicien wrote, a crime that heinous has to have the highest possible consequence. The IOC has decided not to apply much in the way of consequence, passing the buck to individual federations instead, and that's going to lead to much more criticism of them in the days to come.