Forthe third Olympics in a row, Russian athletes are not competing under the name or flag of their home country and their national anthem does not play at medal ceremonies.
The ROC is the name of the national organization in charge of organizing the country’s Olympic athletes every two years, analogous to the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee (USOPC). But it is not supposed to represent the country as a whole.
If it all sounds confusing and technical, that’s because it is — the result of a years-long tangle of punishments, appeals and court rulings in the wake of reports that Russia was engaged in sometimes elaborate state-sponsored doping at the 2012 and 2014 Olympics.
“It is impossible to know just how deep and how far back this conspiracy goes,” the WADA’s lead investigator on the scandal, Richard McLaren, said in 2016,according to the Associated Press.
However, in 2020 the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) cut that penalty in half even as it took pains to insist it was not validating “the conduct of [Russia’s anti-doping agency] or the Russian authorities.”
“We at WADA remain disappointed that CAS has decreased the level of the sanctions from four years to two years and that CAS allows them to compete Russian athletes with the colors of the flag in the uniforms,” the WADA President Witold Bańka said about the CAS ruling,according toUSA Today.
The Russians had also suggested using “Katyusha,” a folk song, in Tokyo in place of their anthem but the CAS rejected that, the APreported.
A compromise was struck with Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1.
To learn more about Team USA, visitTeamUSA.org. Watch the Tokyo Olympics now on NBC.
source: people.com
