Back to the Top News Newsfeed

IOC president Thomas Bach says entire federations could be banned for doping

The International Olympic Committee's increasingly hard line on doping took another turn Tuesday as president Thomas Bach suggested entire federations could be banned from the Games.

Bach wrote in an op-ed piece for USA Today that the IOC will apply a "zero tolerance policy not only with regard to individual athletes, but to all their entourage within its reach." That could include penalties that stretch beyond individual athletes implicated in doping to national federations as a whole, and potentially result in athletes from "contaminated" federations being compelled to prove they are clean rather than presuming all are on the level until they fail a drug test.