Bobsled, skeleton officials moving worlds out of Russia
Avoiding what would have almost certainly been a widely boycotted world championships, international officials pulled this season’s biggest bobsled and skeleton competition out of Russia on Tuesday after a number of sliders said they would not compete in a nation so enveloped in a doping scandal.
The decision was immediately praised by sliders. Russia’s bobsled federation said it understood the rationale, even after government officials there decried the move.
A new site — Germany and the U.S. are potential hosts — will likely be announced in the coming days. The move by the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation comes less than a week after the latest scathing report from World Anti-Doping Association investigator Richard McLaren showed the depth of doping and test-tampering by Russia during the 2012 and 2014 Olympic cycles.
“That’s a monumental decision by the IBSF and the right move to protect clean athletes and to tell the world that state-sponsored doping is unacceptable,” U.S. women’s bobsled pilot Elana Meyers Taylor said. “I am ecstatic about the decision.”