Russia escapes blanket ban from Rio Olympics

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has opted not to impose a blanket ban on Russia for next month’s Rio Olympics amid the scandal over state-sponsored doping. Decisions on individual athletes’ participation will be left to their relevant sports federations, the IOC said. Sunday’s announcement follows the World Anti-Doping Agency’s (WADA) call for a Rio ban in response to an independent report that found evidence of widespread state-sponsored doping by Russian athletes at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Russia will not face a total Olympics ban over its doping scandal https://t.co/FuErIhWo9J pic.twitter.com/LyfPq6DBTN— Newsweek (@Newsweek) 24 juillet 2016 Last week, the Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld the International Association of Athletics Federations’ ban on Russia’s track and field stars. But many Russian athletes who had not failed drugs tests had denounced collective punishment. Such a ban would have been humiliating for Olympic superpower Russia whose officials have said it would have been part of a Western conspiracy. President Vladimir Putin had said the affair could split the Olympic Movement, bringing echoes of the 1980s when the United States led a political boycott of the Moscow Games of 1980 and the Soviet Union led an Eastern Bloc boycott of the Los Angeles Games four years later.