{"id":16689,"date":"2015-11-13T09:05:48","date_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:05:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/with-olympic-boycott-ruled-out-russians-to-admit-some-wrong\/"},"modified":"2015-11-13T09:05:48","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T17:05:48","slug":"with-olympic-boycott-ruled-out-russians-to-admit-some-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/sports\/with-olympic-boycott-ruled-out-russians-to-admit-some-wrong\/","title":{"rendered":"With Olympic boycott ruled out, Russians to admit some wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW \u2014<\/strong> With an Olympic boycott ruled out, Russia is planning to at least partially admit it has a doping problem.<\/p>\n

Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko told The Associated Press on Thursday that there will \u201cnot in any case\u201d be a boycott of next year\u2019s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.<\/p>\n

A short time later in a separate interview, the acting president of the Russian track federation told the AP he is ready to own up to some of the charges leveled in the World Anti-Doping Agency commission\u2019s massive report on doping in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe admit some things, we argue with some things, some are already fixed, it\u2019s a variety,\u201d said Vadim Zelichenok, declining to provide further details. \u201cIt\u2019s not for the press.\u201d<\/p>\n

The governing body of track and field is expected to rule Friday on whether to suspend Russia from competition because of the doping scandal. If Russia is banned, the country\u2019s track and field team could be excluded from next year\u2019s Olympics.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s damning report by the WADA commission recommended that the Russian track federation be suspended, saying its athletes and officials were involved in \u201cextensive\u201d use of performance-enhancing drugs, obstructed doping tests and helped to cover up drug use. The report said Zelichenok \u201crefused to cooperate\u201d with investigators.<\/p>\n

Even if Russia\u2019s track and field team is banned, Mutko told the AP that the country has no intention of boycotting the Olympics.<\/p>\n

\u201cRussia is against a boycott. Russia is against political interference in sport,\u201d Mutko said. \u201cUnderstand that Russia is a dependable partner of the international Olympic movement.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mutko also appealed for Russia\u2019s track team to be allowed to compete, arguing that a blanket ban would unfairly punish clean athletes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will be painful for those athletes with clean consciences who could compete, that\u2019s the first thing. And the second thing is that it goes against the spirit of the WADA code,\u201d Mutko said. \u201cThe commission itself writes about it in its report. It\u2019s about protecting the athletes with clean consciences.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the Cold War, the United States and allies boycotted the 1980 Moscow Olympics in protest at the Soviet Union. Four years later, there was a Soviet-led boycott of the Olympics in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

IOC President Thomas Bach, meanwhile, met with Russian Olympic Committee head Alexander Zhukov and other officials in Lausanne, Switzerland, amid signs that both sides were working toward an agreement that could avoid a ban.<\/p>\n

Bach has said sanctions are up to the IAAF and WADA, but also stressed that the IOC will be ready to strip any medals from Olympic athletes mentioned in the report who are found guilty of doping.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin insisted clean athletes should be allowed to compete and asked Russian sports officials to carry out an internal investigation into the allegations made in the doping report. Mutko said Russia would provide constant updates about its investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cPractically every day, at the end of the day, we release some kind of information message about the steps we\u2019re taking and we will continue to do that,\u201d Mutko said. \u201cWe\u2019re prepared to inform international society about the steps we\u2019re taking, the investigation, the decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n

In one move, the Russian Olympic Committee asked former Russian track federation president Valentin Balakhnichev to resign from its executive board. The WADA commission\u2019s report said Balakhnichev was \u201cultimately responsible\u201d for doping and cover-ups at the federation during his tenure and linked him to instances in which money was allegedly extorted from athletes.<\/p>\n

The Russian government has consistently slammed the report for what it says is a lack of evidence. Mutko said there was an overreliance on confidential sources and condemned the inclusion of material from undercover recordings made by whistleblowers, which he said violated the rights of those accused of doping.<\/p>\n

The scandal also entered the arena of international diplomacy as the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a stinging critique of the report\u2019s authors.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe position of the special commission on doping with regards to Russian athletes looks extremely biased, politicized,\u201d ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in her weekly briefing, adding that sources cited in the report seem \u201cextremely doubtful.\u201d<\/p>\n

In southern Black Sea resort of Sochi, the host city of last year\u2019s Winter Olympics, some Russian track and field athletes trained in the sun on Thursday. Many remained upbeat about their chances of competing in the Olympics while questioning why other countries were not being investigated alongside Russia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt happens all around the world. Why are these measures taken only for the Russian team? I don\u2019t understand this,\u201d said Maxim Sidorov, a shot putter who competed at the 2012 Olympics. \u201cNot only we, if it\u2019s proved, are using doping. Other countries do it as well. Why aren\u2019t they disqualified?\u201d<\/p>\n

As former European 400-meter relay champion Ksenia Aksyonova trained, her coach said that banning Russia would be \u201ca disaster for athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey devoted their life to this and because of broad political motives probably the whole team can be disqualified,\u201d Rif Babikov said. \u201cWe have seen this – in 1984 we boycotted the Olympics in Los Angeles because of politics, in 1980 western countries boycotted Moscow. Nothing good came out of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, Russian state-controlled bank VTB said Thursday it would not extend its sponsorship contract with the IAAF, which expires this year, but denied it was because of the fallout from the doping report.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe think that all the goals have been achieved regarding this. We have not planned to extend (the contract),\u201d VTB first deputy president Vasily Titov told the RIA Novosti news agency. \u201cNo, it\u2019s not linked to the doping scandal in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Mstyslav Chernov in Sochi, Russia, contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOSCOW \u2014 With an Olympic boycott ruled out, Russia is planning to at least partially admit it has a doping problem. Russian Sports<\/a> Minister Vitaly Mutko told The Associated Press on Thursday that there will \u201cnot in any case\u201d be a boycott of next year\u2019s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. A short time later in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":16690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16689"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}