i do not think that we need to do sports or anywhere there is the atmosphere of called the waters that are due to my knowledge due to a lot to be helpful to put disappointed and they would appreciate it term mind you now of our breaking news story russia is banned from the twenty eighteen winter games but international limper committee allows individual athletes to compete and a neutral flag dismay among team russia as athletes watch the announcement being delivered at the i.o.c. headquarters in thwaites land. where russia has been a banned them from the twenty eighteen winter games although individual athletes have been allowed to compete under a neutral flag they will participate under the name olympic athlete from russia with the country's anthem and symbols banned from the game. these in righted elsley will participate be to an individual or team competitions under the name olympic

else lead from russia with the acronym. they will compete with the uniform bearing this name and under the olympic flag. the olympic anthem will be played in. a russian figure skating cage tatiana task has reacted to the decision saying it's the worst possible. stukas they say there are no words you know i don't want to cry i want to scream the facts are astley's have been allowed to compete as neutrals but have to call themselves olympic athletes from russia i think this is the worst outcome so.

joining us live now is unnecessary to who is in lausanne for us to see the russian flag and the anthem banned from the games can you take us through what was said. well no deal or no team russia this time around of course a decision that is seen as quite unfortunate to see the least by not just all of the russian athletes who are looking forward to participating in the coming of winter olympic games just to take place in over two months from now but also the millions of pounds who are expected to be tuning in to support their team certainly something that's been seen as extremely upsetting for all of those people but after a day of deliberations here in fact the international olympic committee executive board did decide to suspend russia from the upcoming games however allowing individual clean athletes to participate without any flags or outcomes this is obviously something that is being described they've called this the olympic

athlete from russia they're not going to be participating now with an olympic flag but also an olympic anthem playing and this is what the president of the i.o.c. had to say on this. earth here we decided. we want to invite. this is not about exclusion or. this is the description. you see. of. the russian athletes now having to participate under sort of neutral setting is not obviously the only sanction that was implemented by the international olympic community board committee board here in laws and today they've also decided that russia's going to have to pay a hefty fine of fifteen million u.s.

dollars that are supposed to cover these inquiries that were conducted on the issue of allegations of russian doping involvement we also know that the decision has been announced not to accredit any official from the russian ministry of sports at the upcoming olympic games as well as excludes the minister of sport at the time of such a olympic us twenty four team as well as his deputy from any participation in all future olympic games as well as suspend the president of the russian olympic committee from i.o.c. membership however all of that said it has been announced that as part of this decision that the i.o.c. may partially or fully lift the suspension from the commencement of the closing ceremony of the olympic winter games provided these decisions are fully respected and improvement. parties are reporting from. up to date. ok well before today's decision twenty five russian athletes were already banned from participating in the gang used by the commission which examined their cases

many of them have been stripped of their medals that they won in sochi russia in fact from the winter games there back in twenty fourteen the move shattered dreams and ambitions. the story is really more as we got almost no snorkel things produce to appear. only now believes closer because it can be. almost a. good thing is still your. reason you are just really. pressed me and i want. to do is to get used. to should go to good national boarding there which sickly church the gaza roads but

the most the thing even though i've been to warn you absolute joining more of your to the store to store. to be nearer to the bushies to news of the opinion leadership in your work with the rush of water stored. in morning news no. think if you did that just. what did you. say when i joined in the studio by alan moore who's a russian baseball specialist and a columnist thanks for coming into the studio alan. let's start with. a lot we are going to buy us and. some say that this is the fairest option there's going to be a massive mixed reaction because obviously it's great news that some of those clean athletes can compete but they can under their own country's flag a lot of our point of the olympics isn't it it is i mean people trained

a whole lives you've got children who are watching t.v. i know most of them but under we've dreamed of representing our countries use of indoor lympics so it is our kind of like great team to march out of a new little stadium behind your fly gift. you are looking to win a medal you style or what your flag or warp if your first place you're an arsenal to be played. next year if russian athletes are in south korea they won't have on your diet so it's kind of a it's a it's a lifelong dream ruined it's a what didn't say i should say. this press conference that we were listening to a couple of hours ago no mention of state sponsored doping i've been saying it all evening but the whole crux of these investigations from the mclaren report except for this it's been state sponsored we're going to pin russia for this it didn't come up today and instead it was it's the russian sports ministry that's to blame it's the russian olympic committee that's to blame if that's the case then why why aren't our fleets allowed to compete and listen to their own and the main us that's

the question isn't it is it would you say this is a fudge this is what i'm trying to get i'm trying to understand why they've decided to issue this punishment at the same time a step back from claiming it's state sponsored i think they need to compromise and we spoke with just last week when we were here to do some more with the schools to you know the or you'll see need the games to go ahead they need russian athletes to me the russian my soccer team to play they need to. contact a hockey league to release their players because if they don't the russian the winter olympics loses lose it's cash cow and that's been the biggest problem is because when they split the two olympics this summer i'm going every two years it's been a disaster and revenues have fallen and people have been not watching numbers that they should be so they have forged they have forged this removal state sponsor which i know is a pair of money money people and something that i detested from the start. the very key not to blame people at the top of it don't want to bring people in the kremlin

now they have made a scapegoat in the tally more to go that was always going to come down. you know even dan it makes no sense. it's you're buying him to say all the credit weren't involved in this whole world of sports ministry were involved in they weren't involved they've been very political with their language but the i.o.c. needs russia more than russia in this moment if they need russia which is going to jump in there. and you know if they need russia there why strip them of their identity theft. they have to be seen to acknowledge and that's to biggest problem because i said two years ago when i was sitting here and i said that last summer that's. an order to be seen to do something they need to be born in. the fact that they are now making this big big show means that not only has the fight against doping for fairness in sport has been set back even ford bridges had

for years now is tenuous at least because you know all the folks from of russia are nothing of the clean up so they need russia to be in this role to be the kind of the penitent and to me and say look we're sorry we're sorry and let's get on with it so the you know it's useful for them they're useful it's useful to be able to beat russia with this stick yeah and let's be fair i mean they haven't let rush off the hook here he came out and said this is none precedented attack on the integrity of the limpid games i mean no mincing the words there do you think it will be enough to satisfy most people getting back to seoul and 1980's. seven of the finalists of the one hundred meters men's sprint all tested positive if ever there was an attack those that there's been countless cases nonstop of doping we saw the charging at the athletes cause we've seen you know countless nations kind of like in greece you know the two top sprinters having

a motorbike accident has turned out that they were just moving away from dope testing it's nonstop and i think we have to sort of now look at ourselves as what are sports for what we can or what use is the olympic movement because it certainly is a big sport and certain opera for a play you're does the last thing they want they want to keep the revenues rolling in and protect themselves so this isn't on preserves that is just if we want to say it is the latest attack that's all of us in it's bittersweet isn't it for this cleanup league that they're allowed to compete if there's not a boycott you know there's a lot of people who you know there's these rumors are going to start to be pushed out by certain sections of the foreign media including b.b.c. saying that sources close to close to the kremlin have said that russia tomorrow will announce that they will boycott the games and that would be absolute because they have not been able to get russia. so if if they can if they can turn around and get you know to walk away themselves it's better again. terms the evidence that

was brought up today. again they were pains to say look we've been objective we're trying to be impartial but i've changed the guy in charge of made a lot of planes you can't corroborate all of them do you think they've been fair and i say that because they did were asked about these tests where supposedly samples inside there was more for clean ones at the sochi games and the accusation was they must have been opened somehow i think we can listen to what the i.o.c. representative said today when he was asked this question. solves. some samples because. those concentration is. so high that it would. eliminate. the. and it was from that they had.

some of. those completely so i. and others were closed so. what do you make of that a lot being made of these test tubes when somebody asked directly about it i can't help thinking they can't quite work out how it was possible these test tubes were chosen and used because it was impossible to open them except under laboratory conditions and if they were opened we would know and if you know they said we we don't know how do we know order open source they are kind of hard to get this kind of fortune of little bits and it is very interesting a lot of or not all of this comes from roger gov who for part of the statement today has been quite disbelieved by the olympic committee because they don't call

him they they believe that he's impartial but he has an ax to grind or that he is hiding something and i do believe you'll see we're presented with a lot of information from roger and from his archives or from his material he stole from his moscow laboratory. but they haven't seen all of us so they have to be very careful what they say because god knows what would most order them to learn from this massive material when watching over order nations follow the favor right now i'm going to read you a long statement here because i've been handed something that was that has been published on the sea website is part of the report. report and it says it is talking about this state sponsored bear with me so the independent and impartial evidence do not allow the i.o.c. to establish with certitude either who initiated or who headed this game so with me on many occasions reference was made on the involvement of the minister of sports level but no indication independent or impartial evidence appeared to corroborate

any involvement or knowledge at a higher level of the state i mean that's going to change the narrative of a lot of state sponsors a lot of journals to be writing right up to this point in the state sponsored every story you read about this issue russian state sponsored game it's been proven in the report i can't believe i'm going to read a paper tomorrow and say oh actually it wasn't state sponsored even. this is what the schmidt report appears to be saying is saying that it's happened at a lower level you know to. do with a lot of this happens on their own or from experience through work control and see what goes on and how these these you are the topping organizations work is that they're not really interested in catching you're the top people because there is this connection between the likes of roger and given his friends in america do you carry an hour of this or that you to share the information be testing so. you know this really does this disprove money worries the idea of sponsored which in itself

is wrong language because we know ourselves that here in russia everything is state sponsored everything is that story this works and you know they do use it as a way to destroy russia i think now they're starting to eat wrong words alan if we look at the things that came out today it was said that not all the probes have been analyzed yet but the decision has been made has been it to to to not allow the russian athletes to to wear their uniforms or be identified apart from in this you know a limb pick i think for from russia. and not to have what i wired is possible how has this been made possible when not everything has been investigated currently the simple answer is it's scored on a simple simply is there is no fair play in sport i mean at this level the simple truth is that in order to compete at the highest level you have to do something to

stay there and when you have a very well paying job at the level of mr barker and mr reedy and travesty and so on they need to do to kind of stay on top of us and are doing a new russia is very useful to keep this terror and i mean just in i was speaking with a russian military official to see evening. his fear is that the hockey team themselves will object because the money of them who would not play the n.h.l. for a lot of what they would all look to see. government jobs and retire because they're very good leaders on and off the ice and so on that they would have to have your state jobs when they retire from ice hockey if they go to the olympics to compete many doors will close them so there will be a decision made tomorrow about that or not and so you know the players are boycott but they will address a very very seriously and this again is going back to they want to represent our nation you know under our. money athletes who don't dope who will drop but

they're going to be punished for this as well just very quickly i mean looking at the people that we know have twenty five i mean i know it's a lot from so to the thousand if one thousand items before but they found twenty five people from start you competed he were guilty and you got to shame that they were that's what they're saying but. isn't isn't the solution just to name shame and you know. why have this wider issue with the flag and anthem and force people to compete is neutrals as long as they fit certain criteria well i think there has been a case that we know mining sports for example tennis where people have had questionable test results and picked up an injury for six months i mean a lot of top players of those happens of not just the top but around the place i think. it's very very unfair and russia under doing this there is of course a political drive behind us. one of the question that i have my mind is ok so russia's bond and so on and it was completely banned what next who else would we go

after like my my money would be on nobody because they want to keep beating the drums a russia is bad russia is bad because of russia is the only bad one in order these are clean and then there's my athletes from our inner clean your it is nuclear clean so we can sleep well at night thinking are we ok the russians or the bad guys in the case of the case that there's a lot of bad guys everywhere. you know it's just it won't change and now with this it will change even for the alan yet when i was listening to the sentences that were used the first bit was near those who have responsibility you know another that are needed to be sanctioned and you thought ok you know fired up but this sentence actually stuck little bit of a knife like but the clean russian athletes should be integrated into those sanctions and they're pretty damn hard. there's going to be a lot of people out there who are thinking. it's up at no it's not a simple questions and answers this is. again go back to childhood always most

important sports is for socialization so last week i was speaking with the director of the facility physics faculty in our university and i spoke with him and he coaches the russian down syndrome team. and he sees the positives for sports and how these young people don't feel integrated into the wider society through sport right now russian clinician athletes they have a stigma hanging over them you know they have the big red x. written across all them we've you know the reaction is so bad and we saw it in the real live pics were an american swimmer started to you know make a big deal about the russians for meddling beside her so they won't be able to. still be stigmatised only going to suit a particular narrative it's extremely unfair again it comes back to kids kids who

watch the same goal was to point so we're trying to get kids off the coast away from the play station x. box or support a more. widespread ramifications doesn't it well that we're going to have to leave it there always good to have you in the studio and i was a lot more sports hosts that capital f.m. moscow thank you places. now most of the russian athletes who were handed those life bans were talking about the dispute the evidence that was presented against them than they do insisting they are innocent and accuse officials of violating their presumption of innocence ok partridge takes a look now at how russia has been treated as guilty from the very start. four years ago there was skepticism that russia's first winter olympics would go without a hitch due mongers predicted not enough flights not enough hotels and not enough snow concerned about socially squaller in sochi double toilets and missing door handles the water came out of the tower problem with the door but the house games

went so well even critics had to admit they were it three things going to mazing it's running like clockwork and everything's just going really really well as i'm doing really impressive everything that she's done so far. which take care. so far well organized people are really friendly here having a good time like you are accommodation or food almost four years later and russians who triumphed in sochi and now being stripped of their medals and given life and limb pick bans why in twenty sixty in the middle report explosively claimed russia used an elaborate system of state sponsored doping athletes officials and ministers were implicated like the plot of a cold war novel the attitude to russia a return to skepticism then retribution as its track and field team and entire paralympic team with damage from the rio games which left the clean athletes

wondering why. we care about how the russians completing it until they got it the right policy but sure there are a clean nation never mind cleaned out there to be a clean nation. the i.o.c. and i p.c. have now definitively backed up mclaren supporting the claims of former lab boss cricketing don't think of who's under criminal investigation in russia and saying that infamous sample swapping system has finally been replicated but questions remain the i.o.c. standard of proof is not beyond any reasonable doubt but rather the balance of probability the presumption of guilt is enough it was logic of who was the original and only source of so-called proof against russian fleets this evidence has been grossly overvalued we can see we are seeing the result of a proper legal process it's a question of faith to believe broaching course or not is looks more like

a religious inquisition. questionable bottles have no visible scratches they were presumed tampered with as the russians must have perfected their technique and left no marks and no argument basis for an on mass ban to clean condemned without any guilt no presumption of innocence for team russia what we see here is actually a violation of the olympic charter which is. which stands against political national racial discrimination so it appears that in the name of protecting clean athletes they are actually taking away the rights of russian clean athletes and in my opinion the mclaren accusations are unfounded and they are very politically biased. surely any athlete should be denied a medal and banned from competition if he or she cheats it undermines others' lifetime's work as does abound slapped on the innocent who are simply presumed

guilty. after the world anti-doping agency laid out a road map for russian twenty sixteen the country acted swiftly with a number of strong measures. it reform the structure of russia's own anti drugs agency and allowed international experts to take control of its tests it also made doping a criminal offense punishable with a jail sentence of lorca only currently imposed by the handful of european countries we solder met eighteen out of twenty criteria saying it couldn't meet the final two as it denies any government run doping program ever existed but last month water still found the russian agency non-compliant the head of water denied the decision was political but did say sport cannot exist without politics it's a sort of. impossible dream isn't it because for its. own sport it is. rival. well such comments may be at odds

with perhaps the most important document in sport the olympic charter it is clearly state that there can be no political or commercial abuse of sport and athletes. this cashmore is a professor of sociology at aston university and he believes that politics has been very much at play in the decision making process. just listening to the press conference and they fielded exactly that question and they said this isn't a political decision but of course the world knows that it's exactly that this has been a controversy that has been clouded in political judgment and it's impossible to separate this particular decision from what's going on in the rest of the world regarding fake news and the allegedly intervention of russia into britain's briggs's vote and even the american presidential elections there is a lot of this kind of stuff swirling around the world at the moment

a lot of it is beyond belief frankly about people are accepting some of it i don't think you can disentangle the two things. and in our breaking news story russia has been banned from twenty eighteen winter games however individual athletes have been allowed to compete and to a neutral flag they will participate under the name elim pick athlete from russia with the country's anthem and symbol of banned from the game. this. will participate be it individual or team competitions under the name olympic else lead from russia with all. they will compete with the uniform. and. the olympic swim will be played. ok so the

question now how will russia react we can talk about this will be a prank he's in the studio with us hello again. i suppose people are speculating now could russia boycott these games completely that is true and the question of whether russia will accept competing under a neutral flag is of course a tough one and that is going to be a tough decision and it will depend on the individual athletes but on the other hand you may like it or not but it will somehow be influenced by the russian olympic officials in any way if russia chooses to boycott yung chang twenty this will be a direct result of that i.o.c. ruling that just came out a few hours ago but just to remind you some probes already resulted in the lifetime bans for more than two dozen russian athletes and we understand that more could carman this will affect this process of inviting clean athletes to compete under the neutral olympic flag and as the i.o.c.

given their reason for that a lifetime ban because in sport that's pretty much unprecedented isn't it well you know questions have been raised over these lifetime bans in russia. along the lines of why do some international players athletes that dope the ones that are from other countries receive bans for only a few years and in this case that said they are disqualified for the rest of their life the reasons that you were talking about and this case in general in a nutshell there are two these are the scratches on doping test bottles on the one hand and on the other hand the excessive amounts of salt in clean doping samples that the sea says couldn't have been produced by a human body but is that enough to blame the individuals for cheating while they could have been unaware of these this kind of tampering is that enough to produce

lifetime bans and is that enough to strip the clean wash and athletes of their right to carry the russian flags at the winter olympics and yung chang the answer for many here in russia would be no one like the reaction that we've been getting from some other limbic officials mainly from the west for example tracey crouch the british sports minister is pleased that the i.o.c. has taken the decision she tweeted this it's an important step in protecting the integrity of sport and gives confort to our athletes that are competing on a level playing field and let's move on to a reaction from the president of the german olympic sports confederation he called tuesday a good day for international sport and a good day for german sport i suppose it should briefly at exam juco if he was the head of the russian olympic committee he said the size and downsides to.