We are waiting for the IOC's decision, this weekend, while they seek legal advice about the implications of a blanket ban. I just wanted to add my thoughts about this to the pot. It isn't a purely legal decision, it is also ethical, and it is about the future of the Olympic movement. Just my ideas, and please add your own in the comments.
Clean Russian athletes cannot speak out about their country's behaviour; have you seen what happens to dissenters? Russian people are seeing life through their own media mirror that only partly reflects the way that we see things.
The gymnasts can only speak through their performances. They are part of an international community of peers who support their participation in the Games. If Olympism is about promoting harmonious relationships and world peace, if what we are seeing on a broader level is the beginning of a new Cold War, how awful to isolate these individuals from their wider community and to deny them the right they have earned - through their own ethical and fair behaviour - to play their part in the world's Olympic movement, to create connections between Russia and the wider world, at a time when Russia is shrinking and drawing away from the international sports and Olympic community.
Would you deny press accreditation to Russia's most free thinking journalists on the basis of their country's poor record of censorship and press freedoms?
If Olympism is still alive and well, the IOC will take this opportunity to support the Russian gymnasts, and make it possible for them - all clean athletes, and demonstrably so, supported by their own international sports governing body - to compete fairly at the Olympic Games, under a neutral flag bearing the Olympic Rings. This would be promoting harmonious relationships between individuals from different countries. The power of the Olympic community to overcome divisive forces would be enhanced.
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