Clubbiness of IOC makes its awful handling of Valieva case even worse | Opinion

• The Russian Anti-Doping Agency blames WADA's lab for holding up Valieva's sample
• WADA places the blame on RUSADA and the Court of Arbitration for Sport
• IOC president Thomas Bach continued the finger pointing, saying 'we did not want her to participate and we lost the court case'

BEIJING – Everybody is to blame so nobody is to blame.

It was impossible to watch Kamila Valieva’s implosion and not be utterly horrified, and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach was rightfully harsh Friday in his reaction to it. Avoiding specific mention of coach Eteri Tutberidze, he condemned her complete lack of empathy for the 15-year-old and expressed concern that Valieva will continue to be in harm’s way after she leaves the Winter Games in Beijing.

But his distress, and that of the other powerbrokers in the Olympic movement, will only go so far. Anyone looking for Bach to issue an apology, or to offer concrete plans to ensure something this heinous never happens again, must be new here.

The IOC, the International Testing Agency, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the Court of Arbitration for Sport – it’s an impressive sounding collection of organizations meant to suggest transparency and accountability. In reality it’s an alphabet soup of incestuousness, designed with the sole purpose of providing cover for one another.

In Valieva’s case, it has worked to diabolic perfection.

The Russian Anti-Doping Agency blames WADA’s lab. WADA blames RUSADA. And CAS. CAS blames WADA. The IOC, and Bach, blame CAS. All they have to do is continue pointing the finger at each other for another three days and they’ll have successfully kicked the can so far down the road that it’s no longer in sight and everyone will forget about it.

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“We went to court. We did not want (her) to participate and we lost the court case,” Bach said, giving the verbal equivalent of a shrug. “We have to respect the rule of law because if we are not respecting it, if we are abandoning the rule of law, there is no international sports anymore. So we had to accept this.”

Never mind that a 15-year-old girl has been left to twist in the wind, being at the center of an international dumpster fire doing God knows what to her psyche.

This is not a flaw in the system, it’s the whole point of it.

Independent organizations in name only

The IOC needs the appearance of oversight so those with a stake in the movement – think the sponsors who write the checks with all those zeroes on them – can pretend it still has credibility. But the IOC has no interest in it in reality because it wants an out when things go wrong.

“It is surprising and of serious concern to WADA that a CAS panel would see fit to depart from the clear terms of the (Anti-Doping) Code, which was subject to three consultation phases involving all anti-doping stakeholders, including athletes, over a period of two years before being unanimously adopted in November 2019,” WADA huffed in a response Friday to the release of the full CAS decision, which allowed Valieva to compete in Beijing despite a positive drug test Dec. 25.

“This sets a dangerous precedent, which WADA hopes and expects will be corrected by future CAS Panels.”

Yeah? And just who will make that happen? The system was constructed to give everyone plausible deniability, and the IOC has stacked the various “independent organizations” with its own people to ensure no one gets out of line.

WADA was founded by Dick Pound, currently the IOC’s longest-serving member. Its president during the height of the Russian doping scandal involving the Sochi Games – not to be confused with the doping scandal at these current Games – was Craig Reedie, an IOC member since 1994 who served as its vice president from 2012 to 2016.

The ITA was created in the aftermath of the Russian doping scandal – again, the Sochi one, not this one – to oversee testing, and bills itself as independent. Yet three of its board members are also IOC members, and it had to ditch its original plan to call itself the Independent Testing Agency because under Swiss law it wasn't, actually, independent. 

There are ways to address some of the issues

The current president of CAS is John Coates, the longtime Australian IOC member who is currently serving his second term as vice president and who, oh by the way, just happens to chair the IOC’s Legal Affairs Commission.

That’s right. If an athlete breaks an IOC rule, it’s Legal Affairs that hands down the punishment – which the athlete would then appeal to CAS.

Nope, no conflict of interest there!

As if that’s not slimy enough, Coates also had a big hand in devising the new process for selecting host cities, first used to choose the host for the 2032 Games. Which went to Brisbane … Australia.

“When people get the right distance to what happened, the only attitude you can take (is) if you want to ensure fair treatment of everybody regardless of passport, of history, whatever, there’s only one choice to follow the rule of law, even if you’re not necessarily happy with a decision,” Bach said. “In the interest of the overall international sport system, there is no other choice.”

Actually, there is.

The IOC could ensure that CAS and WADA are truly independent, divorcing them completely from the back-room dealings in the Olympic Family Lounges and five-star hotels that IOC members favor. It could allow organizations to select, or hire, their own administrators and abide by the decisions they make, no matter how uncomfortable they make the IOC.

It could allow substantive punishments to be imposed for those who flout the rules, so there are actual consequences for the people who violate those Olympic values Bach professes to love so much.

And when a 15-year-old girl is traumatized by the people who are supposed to protect her, Bach, the IOC and the rest of the suits in the alphabet soup could care more about having her back than covering their own backsides.  

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Nancy Armour on Twitter @nrarmour.