Robert Craddock: Russia deserved to be banned from the Rio Olympics

CHEATING is one thing. Getting caught, promising to change your ways, then brazenly continuing to lie and corrupt the system is quite another.

Russian athletes have been banned from the Rio Olympics.

CHEATING, conniving Russia got what it deserved.

Cheating is one thing. Getting caught, promising to change your ways, then brazenly continuing to lie and corrupt the system is quite another.

Without contrition there can be no forgiveness. They had to go.

The decision to ban their athletics team from the Olympics, brave and historic as it was, was the only logical move the IAAF could make in Vienna.

It’s not surprise the voting was unanimous.

RUSSIAN ATHLETES COP RIO BAN

The Olympics must be careful about the proposal to let some athletes training overseas compete as neutrals if they suddenly come up clean. How would you know what they have taken over the years in such a warped system?

Winston Churchill once described Russia as a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

Had he been alive today and asked to comment on the Russian athletic scandal the temptation would to be more direct and call their athletics officials a bunch of dirty, rotten, conniving cheats.

The IAAF could have felt entirely comfortable with the decision if the only evidence they had was the sensational revelation from former doping chiefs last November about systematic doping in Russia.

But it was what followed that was the clincher. After agreeing to change their secretive, scandalous ways Russia did anything but with more than 700 athletes refusing drug tests in the past seven months.

The shameless defiance of orders to try and cleanse their sordid system was a total embarrassment to world sport, the Olympic movement and Russia’s credibility as s sports nation.

People say that the ban could unfairly rub out the careers of innocent athletes which is true, but every war has a price.

Just as is the case when a real war is being fought, innocent civilians get caught in the crossfire.

Sometimes it is the price you must pay for a greater cause.

The temptation is to toast the decision with a glass of vodka. But if its Russian vodka beware.

Who knows what might be in it.

Originally published as Robert Craddock: Russia deserved to be banned from the Rio Olympics