Confronted by a staggering amount of evidence, the IAAF Council did what it had to do Friday. Track and field's world governing body governed. Russia's track federation will remain suspended through the Rio Games.
The decision probably was sealed even before the jaw-dropping World Anti-Doping Agency report released earlier this week that detailed the dysfunction, obstruction and obfuscation hampering recent independent testing efforts in Russia.
Some athletes hid from doping control officers behind the walls of closed military cities. Other anecdotes about fake urine and fleeing athletes would be comical if they weren't such blatant symptoms of a system that is still very sick, a system that has harmed so many in a multitude of ways.
The IAAF task force that issued the recommendation to keep the suspension in place duly noted some progress in Russia, but correctly stated that more time is needed to evaluate whether that will stick.
Those straightforward statements, by an organization that has battled scandal for the past two years, were accompanied by a complicated addendum.
Anticipating legal challenges to the ban -- and perhaps trying to preempt a power move by the International Olympic Committee -- the IAAF attempted to define conditions under which some individual Russian track and field athletes could apply for an exception and compete. The criteria are bewildering for anyone who has followed doping issues and jurisprudence. A central feature is that athletes can apply to compete as "neutral" entrants if they can prove they were out of the country for an undefined period, or subject to "fully compliant" drug testing, or both.
But how long must applicants have been out of Russia? Which anti-doping bureaucracies are pure enough? What about athletes training in countries where WADA-accredited labs have been suspended? If individual Russian athletes are going to be accepted in part because they've never tested positive, square that with IAAF task force chairman Rune Andersen's candid (and accurate) statement Friday that two or five or a hundred negative results prove nothing.
The IOC meets next week, not in full session but in "summit" with representatives from its executive ranks, international sports federations and national Olympic committees. Its rights and jurisdiction to alter Friday's IAAF actions are unclear, with a scant seven weeks remaining before the Summer Games.
A press release ahead of Tuesday's meeting, convened to harmonize issues of athlete eligibility across sports, included this Socratic line: "The discussion will have to address the difficult decision between collective responsibility and individual justice."
WADA Athlete Committee chairwoman Beckie Scott said any substantial weakening of the IAAF ban would be wrong. "I think of all the clean athletes who have been affected by this for decades, and their rights -- the focus has been too heavy on a handful of athletes affected by a failed system," Scott told ESPN.com. The retired Canadian cross-country skier was denied an Olympic championship at the moment it would have meant most, when two Russians finished ahead of her at the 2002 Salt Lake Games. Those medalists were subsequently disqualified for doping.
The Court of Arbitration for Sport could find itself flooded with individual cases in the next few weeks, depending on how many Russian athletes apply to the IAAF panel through the newly created side door and are denied. Or, those who feel burned could go to court. New rules in sports tend to provoke as much litigation as they forestall.
Add to this the looming report due July 15 on the larger picture of doping in Russian sport, a probe initiated by exiled former Moscow lab chief Grigory Rodchenkov's sweeping and alarming statements to The New York Times last month.
The so-called Sochi Investigation could produce evidence that has a bearing on the credibility of all Russian sports, and makes it difficult to justify the participation of other Russian athletes in Rio. Olympic rosters are supposed to be submitted four days after the report is released. Chaos could ensue, and that may be part of the hypothetical the IOC will address next week.
Conclusions and investigations about doping in Russia are hurtling through the pipeline now at a rate of speed markedly different from the inertia that persisted for years while tips swelled to a torrent. Along with the Rio ban itself, the most right-minded thing the IAAF did was to finally and belatedly give Russian whistleblowers Vitaly Stepanov and his wife, Yuliya, their due.
The task force devoted a page to its support of Stepanova's request to compete in her specialty, the 800-meter event, including this:
The Taskforce considers that Yuliya Stepanova has made a truly exceptional contribution to the fight against doping in sport. She took great personal risks in order to break open a doping culture that no one else on the inside was willing to expose, and no one on the outside was able to expose. That contribution has led to further investigations and disclosures. Without her contribution, the unique opportunity that now exists to fix the system would very likely not exist. Instead RUSADA and the Moscow laboratory would be continuing to operate in a compromised manner; coaches and doctors would be continuing to administer PEDs to their athletes; and those athletes would be continuing to compete in international competition with a wholly illicit advantage. Yuliya Stepanova has therefore struck a great blow for clean athletes everywhere.
Whistle-blowing is vital to the fight against doping in sport. From a policy perspective, therefore, the Taskforce considers it extremely important to send a very strong message to athletes everywhere that such contributions are highly valued.
The couple got the news at home Friday. Yuliya was tending to their toddler son, who has an ear infection. She hasn't been feeling all that well herself, and is still bothered by a tweaked hamstring she suffered in training in late May. It's been three years since she joined her husband in gathering information on Russian coaches and athletes that included surreptitious recordings.
Vitaly said they are pleased to know Yuliya has a fighting chance to be in Rio, and they hope that "sports officials will learn from this."
"We were trying to fight the system," he said. "Unfortunately we were not able to get much support in Russia. But we never felt the athletes were to blame for the system that exists. I'm sure there are clean Russian athletes. It's just that most of them didn't have a chance to achieve good results."