JOIN USOnce again, the people who run the Olympics just can't say no to Vladimir Putin.
Not when he spends more than USD 50 billion to host a winter Olympics to show off a resurgent Russia. Not when he talks darkly about returning to the days of Olympic boycotts in 1980 and 1984.
Certainly not when he suggests that doping officials of one powerful country can you guess which one? are behind efforts to ban Russia from the Rio Olympics.
When Putin talks, Olympic officials listen. And that's the biggest reason why Russian athletes at least some of them will march in opening ceremonies less than two weeks from now in Brazil.
With Russian prestige on the line, the executive board of the International Olympic Committee caved in. Instead of banning Russia from Rio for running a state-sanctioned doping operation, the IOC members decided instead Sunday to allow individual sports federations to decide which Russians can compete.
Spineless, yes, but that's to be expected. No reason to let a little doping scandal get in the way of a cozy relationship that serves both sides so well.
It was just a little more than two years ago that Putin was the face of a winter Olympics that he saw as far more than just a sporting event. He cheered Russian athletes in arenas and in the mountains, and celebrated with them as they added to the host country's medal haul.
Meanwhile, his agents were working late into the night at the Sochi doping lab, exchanging urine samples taken from the country's athletes for clean ones in an elaborate scheme to escape detection.
It paid off with 33 medals for Russia, 11 of them gold. The country led the medal standings, and Russian pride surged with every big win.
That much of it was a scam wouldn't be uncovered until many months later. When it was, it was clear the scope of the cheating effort was so great that it couldn't have been pulled off without cooperation and approval from the highest levels of the Russian government.
Yet Russian athletes will still compete in Rio. The official explanation for just why came from IOC President Thomas Bach, who said it would be unfair to ban all Russians when it has not been proven that all of them cheat.
"At the end of the day, we have to be able to look in the eye of the individual athletes concerned by this decision," Bach said. The unofficial explanation was more telling.
"The IOC decision was to be expected. You can't behave improperly toward a power like Russia," said Gennady Alyoshin, a Russian Olympic Committee official, in comments to the Tass news agency.