As the Olympics are coming around the corner, Russia has gained the limelight. The World Antidoping Agency and national doping officials around the world have called for Russia to be barred from the Rio Olympic Games this summer. The Russian government has allegedly promoted the use of doping to athletes to win medals at the Olympic Games. However, the Russian Ministry of Sport denies these allegations. Many in Russia believe that this is not to blame on sports and athletes going against the rules but, instead, is to blame on Western politics getting in the way of Russian progression.

The World Antidoping Agency and national doping officials believed that Russian athletes have been doping to enhance sports performance to receive medals. Grifory Rodchenkov, who was the director of a laboratory where Russian athletes were tested for using drugs, was the whistleblower for this whole ordeal. A lot of Russia’s biggest star athletes of the Olympics were involved in doping. Dr. Rodchenkov has reported that Russian antidoping experts and members of the intelligence service replaced urine samples which were tainted by performance enhancing drugs with clean urine collected from the same players months earlier. These Russian antidoping experts and members of the intelligence service would somehow break into the tamper-proof bottles which are the standard for international competitions. Apparently, this has been happening for years and none of the athletes were caught doping. The World Antidoping Agency released a report in November 2015 that described the state-sponsored doping in Russia and the findings were quite compelling. The entire Russian Olympic team is officially banned from competing at the Rio Games. However, the International Olympic Committee wants to give consideration to the rights of individual athletes on the team who have not committed doping.

The Russian government denies any involvement of promoting Russian athletes to use drugs because of their precautions against athletes using them to cheat. The Russian government promotes the ideal of Olympic athletes not using performance enhancing drugs through the use of posters, using the tamper-proof bottles to collect athlete’s urine, and the Russian Antidoping Agency. Russia has wanted to promote the ideal for health and fairness in sport and competitions. But, they clearly did a terrible job to prevent and detect violation with the anti-doping rules.

Many have not approved of the ruling of the national doping officials and the World Antidoping Agency because many of these athletes live to compete in the Olympics. These athletes have sacrificed their lives, time, and energy to compete in the Olympic Games and many who have not even used performance enhancing drugs feel like they are being punished. I believe, that those who have not considered and used doping to perform better should be allowed to compete and those who violated the rules should not be allowed to. With the International Olympic Committee discussing the situation, it seems unlikely that they will anyone compete. They have already denied Russia’s request of letting the track and field athletes compete. However, as of July 24th, BBC has reported that Russia will not have a ban on all athletes who were to compete in the Olympics. The International Olympic Committee will leave it up to the governing bodies of each sport to decide which Russian athletes are clean and can compete in Rio.

However, Russian officials believe that Russian athletes getting banned from the Rio Olympic Games is just a political stunt. Russian officials quickly denied Dr. Rodchenkov’s claims when they were published. Plus, it seems as if Russia is viewing this whole situation as a political war waged against Russia. Most people know Putin is a sports enthusiast and this affects him very personally. He views it as if the Western world has something against Russia and Russians, themselves. According to the Moscow Times, even Russian President Vladimir Putin said that this whole situation represents a “dangerous slide towards political interference in sport.” Russians feel resentment to the rest of the world because their Olympic team has been banned and cannot even comprehend how doping could happen in their country.