GENEVA: In a possible shift of support for Russian athletes competing at the Pyeongchang Olympics, IOC president Thomas Bach told critics on Friday not to put pressure on his executive board before a key decision next month.

Bach will chair an IOC board meeting on Dec 5 which could ban Russia’s team from the Winter Games because of state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Games.

Long seen as Russia’s ally, Bach this month seemed to confirm that position when he criticised “unacceptable” demands for a total ban while two Olympic panels investigate the Sochi doping programme. Ten Russians have already been disqualified.

However, in a speech on Friday, Bach cautioned against those “from whichever side” seeking to influence the IOC.

“Some may try to build pressure. They will be wrong,” the IOC leader told European Olympic officials meeting in Zagreb, Croatia.

The IOC is facing the same politicised decision over Russia as it did before the Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

In July 2016, Bach’s board did not impose a blanket ban on Russia after investigator Richard McLaren published his first report into the Sochi programme less than three weeks before the Rio opening ceremony. Instead, the IOC let individual sports governing bodies lead the decision-making.

Bach was seen then as prioritising Russian athletes’ rights to compete in what proved a chaotic period of urgent legal cases based on McLaren’s interim report. The full investigation report published last December went even deeper into the Russian doping programme, and beyond winter sports.

The “important difference” this time, Bach said on Friday, was that accused Russian athletes have had due legal process and a fair hearing from the IOC.

“Now it is about what happened at the Olympic Winter Games Sochi 2014. Now it is about us,” Bach told leaders of European national Olympic bodies.

“Now it is about the integrity of the Olympic Games. Now it is about what happened at Olympic Games in a laboratory of the Olympic Games. What happened with Olympic athletes. What happened with Olympic medallists.

“This is what we have to bear in mind when I say that we will take a fair decision.”

Published in Dawn, November 25th, 2017