Russia Ban from 2018 Olympics 'Unacceptable' Before IOC Commisions Reach Verdict

After the Russia doping scandal hit the headlines in 2015, many of the country's athletes were banned from competing at the 2016 Summer Olympics and Russia faced a blanket ban at the athletics World Championship in London.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — Participants of the 6th Olympic Summit in Lausanne have backed the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) intention to make the final decision on Russia's participation in the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games in December only after the commission finishes its work, the IOC said Saturday.

READ MORE: Russia Hopes IOC Commission to Complete Work Before Winter Season

A statement published on the Olympic summit's website also reads that it is unacceptable to demand specific sanctions for Russia before the IOC presents its conclusions concerning alleged doping probe fraud among Russian athletes.

Olympic Summit discussed pre-Games testing for @PyeongChang2018, Schmid and Oswald commissions, "eSports* & more https://t.co/hh2wFtjH4m

— IOC MEDIA (@iocmedia) October 28, 2017

In 2015, World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) accused Russia of multiple anti-doping violations and suspended the Moscow laboratory of RUSADA, the Russian National Anti-Doping Agency. Next year, Richard McLaren, the head of the WADA commission, presented a two-part report on doping violations in Russia, which alleged the existence of a state-supported doping system.

Russian officials have refuted the ungrounded accusations that Russian athletes could benefit from state-sponsored doping, while admitting that Russian sports still had some issues with doping abuse.

Following the publication of the report, WADA urged the IOC to consider a blanket ban on the entire Russian Olympic team, but instead the committee let individual sports federations act on the issue, allowing a number of Russian athletes to participate in the Rio Olympics in 2016. At the same time, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) banned all Russian Paralympic athletes from the 2016 Summer Paralympics and the 2018 Winter Games.

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The IOC established two disciplinary commissions to decide on appropriate sanctions and measures, one led by Oswald, tasked with re-verifying doping probes of Russian athletes from 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi, another one headed by former President of Switzerland Samuel Schmid and focused on the alleged involvement of the Russian Ministry of Sport and some other Russian government agencies in doping abuse among the country's athletes.

According to the IOC, the commission under Denis Oswald said that hearings for Russian athletes who could qualify for PyeongChang 2018 would be finished by the end of November, while the Schmid Commission is expected to report on its findings over the next few weeks.