International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach has defended his organisation’s decision not to throw Russia out of the Rio Games for doping, saying it has been backed by world leaders.

Speaking to the Association of National Olympic Committees (ANOC) general assembly in Doha, Bach also claimed that Rio 2016 was a “huge success” and drew a comparison between the headlines that dominated the build-up to the Games and the predictions ahead of last week’s US election.

“I don’t know if you remember the headlines about security, about venues, about water quality, about politics in the country, about Zika – when so-called pest experts were calling for the Games to be cancelled – about clean athletes,” said Bach.

“There was an atmosphere of doubt when we arrived in Rio; an atmosphere of accusations and allegations.

“I think when people study the election results of the last week, they will see the gap between published opinion and public opinion, the gap between perception and reality.

“Well, maybe here is another case study with Rio 2016. Because now that all the dust has settled . . . we can see with great confidence that these Games were a huge success in many if not all respects.”

Social media

The 62-year-old German then highlighted the 75 per cent increase in the number of hours broadcast around the world from Rio 2016 compared to London 2012, and heralded the five billion views the Games received across social media platforms, saying “half of the world’s population was watching”.

But Bach also used a significant part of his 43-minute speech to justify perhaps the most controversial decision of his tenure as IOC boss: refusing to issue Russia with a blanket ban.

The Olympic superpower’s presence in Rio was thrown into doubt three weeks before the start of the Games when Canadian law professor Richard McLaren published his interim report into state-sponsored doping in Russia.

This explosive document, which followed a 2015 report into endemic cheating within Russian athletics, was commissioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency and led to calls for Russia to be immediately suspended from international competition.

Bach and his executive board, however, left the decision on the eligibility of individual Russian athletes up to their respective international federations. The result was that Russia was able to send an almost full-strength team that finished fourth in the medal table.

The International Paralympic Committee, on the other hand, did ban the entire Russian team, while athletics, rowing and weightlifting also took strong stances at the Olympics.

Widely criticised

Bach’s weaker response to McLaren’s findings was widely criticised by anti-doping experts, athletes’ groups and the media, and many expect it will look even less defensible when the final report into how Russia manipulated tests between 2011 and 2015 is published next month.

But the former Olympic fencing champion was in a combative mood in the Qatari capital on Tuesday, telling delegates from the 205 national Olympic committees that the IOC’s stance on Russia has been praised by “dozens of heads of states”.

“They appreciated and acknowledged that we did not take a political decision, but that we took a decision in the interest of sport in respecting the rights of clean athletes,” he said.

“This appreciation from so many world leaders is confirmation of our decision and encouragement for all of us when we had to take such a difficult decision in such a short amount of time.”

Bach then went on to restate his case that the global anti-doping system has “deficiencies” and outlined his plan to create a new “international, top-down testing system” that is independent from sports federations and “national interests”.

Anti-doping units

How this new body will work in practice, and what it means for the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and those sports that have already set up independent anti-doping units, remains to be seen, but Bach said he hoped WADA “will support and drive forward these plans”.

The global anti-doping organisation has its next meeting in Glasgow this weekend, with reform, Russia and the re-election of its president Sir Craig Reedie on the agenda.

Towards the end of Bach’s Doha speech, he also acknowledged the continuing incarceration of IOC vice-president Patrick Hickey, who has remained in Rio de Janeiro on suspicion of alleged ticket touting.

Bach repeated his support for the former Olympic Council of Ireland president and reminded the delegates that “our colleague enjoys the presumption of innocence”.

– (PA)