
Russia Banned From Winter Olympics by I.O.C - koolba
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/05/sports/olympics/ioc-russia-winter-olympics.html
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conistonwater
> _“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.

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

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elialbert
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.

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tandr
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

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hprotagonist
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.

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

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kodablah
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.

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hprotagonist
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.

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grrmx1
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.

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kodablah
> 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?

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d__k
> 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.

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grrmx1
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.

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d__k
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?

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mkempe
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.

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otakucode
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.

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mkempe
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...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2016/05/22/how-
it-works-a-look-at-the-retests-of-olympic-drug-samples/84741634/)

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

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grrmx1
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).

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russianbandit
> 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.

