A number of doping scammers could also benefit from the Olympic delay. Their locks would have prevented a start at the Tokyo Summer Games this year - but they are now expiring.
Frankfurt / Main (dpa) - For doping sinners, the postponement of the Olympic Games in Tokyo can be an advantage.
Numerous athletes who would be banned this year have served their sanctions until the summer games from July 23 to August 8, 2021 and could start - provided they qualify. This is unfair, but not legally contestable. "This leads to distortions of competition, and I hope it is unique," said former German athletics president Clemens Prokop. "This year with the virus has had a lasting impact on equal opportunities and competition."
Fritz Sörgel, pharmacologist and anti-doping fighter, therefore considers it more appropriate to base sanctions on whether - as in the Corona crisis - title fights and sporting events take place: "In such times, valid bans should relate to competitions and training times . Time is stopped. "
An interesting idea, but it should not be as successful as that of the International Olympic Committee of 2007. The IOC had excluded Doper from future summer or winter games that had previously been blocked for more than six months. Four years later, the International Sports Court overturned the so-called Osaka rule.
The IOC has been worried to this day, as can be seen in a question and answer report on the Olympic relocation. "The World Anti-Doping Agency has made it clear that doping bans are chronological according to the applicable rules and are not event-specific," it said. The IOC has tried several times to introduce rules that would exclude athletes banned from doping from the next games: "This was never permitted by the CAS." Sports fraudsters particularly benefit from athletics. Among the approximately 500 runners, jumpers and throwers who have been banned for months, years or for life, there are theoretically around 100 athletes whose locks would not have allowed an Olympic start this year. This emerges from the statistics of the Athletics Integrity Unit, which is responsible for the anti-doping measures of the world association World Athletics. However, less than half of these are likely to be eligible for the 2021 Tokyo Games.
Among them is Gamze Bulut. The Turkish runner was stripped of the Olympic victory of 2012 over 1,500 meters because of doping and a four-year ban was imposed on her. The 27-year-old is allowed to start again on May 20, 2020: Too late for the second gold attempt this summer, early enough to try next year.
Bad luck, however, has Olympic swimming champion from 2012 Rūta Meilutytė. The Lithuanian was suspended for doping until July 20, 2021 and would also miss the new Olympic edition. Although she announced the end of her career last year, she would be young enough to make a comeback at the age of 23. In contrast, two-time Olympic relay champion Conor Dwyer (USA), who is suspended until August 20, 2020, can aspire to take part in Tokyo next year.
"The postponement of the Olympic Games in Tokyo is playing into the cards of many doping sinners. A bitter pill that clean athletes have to swallow again and again when these former doping criminals start," said Thomas Kurschilgen, competitive sports director of the German Swimming association.
The blocked fraudsters in weightlifting that has been discredited by doping for many years will not be able to benefit from the restart of Tokyo in 2021. 76 weightlifters (men and women) would have been blocked for the actual Olympic date. In the summer of 2021, there are currently only 61 - 15 lifts less. An athlete who would be eligible to start again after a personal ban next year would "certainly not have the necessary points" because he would lack the prescribed number of at least two qualification starts per half year, explained Michael Vater, anti-doping officer of the German Association. "Without knowing the updated stipulations, I assume that due to the Olympic postponement, those previously suspended for doping cannot appear in Tokyo."
Nations that have been proven to have more than ten doping cases since 2008 will have to make do with fewer starting places at the Olympics anyway. In the worst case scenario, at most one man and one woman will compete.
FINA list of swimmers banned from doping
AIU list of athletes banned for doping
Questions and answers from the IOC also regarding Olympic locks
