With Games upon us, let's see the IOC and doping for what it is

— -- RIO DE JANEIRO -- Russia will walk into the Rio Summer Games opening ceremonies Friday, a tad depleted but still nearly 300 strong, in its accustomed place: late in alphabetical order and high in geopolitical influence.

Russian whistleblowers Yuliya and Vitaly Stepanov will watch from their temporary home in the United States.

That split-screen visual has felt preordained for months now. It is the embodiment of the near-complete undermining of an 18-year effort to harmonize performance-enhancing drug regulations across borders and continents.

The evidence of state-sponsored doping across all Russian sport gathered in two separate World Anti-Doping Agency investigations over the last nine months is compelling and detailed. While time constraints kept the latest chapter from being exhaustive, it should have been enough to sideline the delegation.

The entire Russian team in Rio represents an exception to the rules hammered out since WADA was born. Or rather, a rewriting of the rules that has taken place in a matter of weeks. The solution to the eligibility question was jammed through an ad hoc quasi-legal pipeline created for one purpose: to make sure as many Russian athletes as possible received the benefit of the doubt, a benefit many thought should be forfeited.

International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach spoke of justice and individual rights at a packed media briefing Thursday. He says he has a clean conscience. "For me, the guiding principle was, after this decision, you have to be able to look into the eyes of all the athletes," he said. "During my visits to the Olympic Village, I have been looking into the eyes of many athletes."

If that's the case, it's hard to imagine he didn't see a lot of disappointment staring back.

So much information, so little time to process it. Such a shame. We must protect the innocent. That has been the drumbeat from IOC officials up to and including Bach.

The absurdly conflicted entities responsible for safeguarding clean sport shielded their eyes instead of pulling out binoculars, starting in 2010 when Russian Anti-Doping Agency employee Vitaly Stepanov began corresponding with WADA. Because WADA -- twice -- didn't act until its hand was forced by investigative journalists. Because it was in the IOC leadership's interest to make that timeframe as compressed as possible, to avoid a major doping scandal on the eve of the Rio Games.

They almost succeeded.

The normally genteel world of Olympic governance has seen an extraordinary bloodletting over the past few days. The IOC has turned on WADA, correctly accusing the agency it created of foot-dragging, while conveniently neglecting the fact that their interests are deeply intertwined.

WADA's former chief investigator, former U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency special agent Jack Robertson, eviscerated WADA for a lack of interest in pursuing the truth, and similarly castigated the IOC for ignoring it when it emerged.

"The action the IOC took has forever set a bar for how the most outrageous doping and cover up and corruption possible will be treated in the future," Robertson told ProPublica's David Epstein. "Those involved in running sport are former athletes, so somehow I figured that they would have honor and integrity. But the people in charge are basically raping their sports and the system for self-interest."

Completing the accusatory circle, Richard McLaren, the Canadian law professor who led a compressed but still informative probe that began in May at WADA's behest, Thursday accused the IOC of misrepresenting his findings.

McLaren's mandate was to probe the extent of Russian state involvement in doping beyond track and field -- an effort that the WADA Athlete Committee had asked for months before. His assignment came only after ex-Moscow lab director Grigory Rodchenkov revealed the creative, concerted sabotage of drug testing at the 2014 Sochi Games in an interview with the New York Times.

McLaren made substantial progress in a short two months. He found a "scratches and marks expert" to prove that tamper-proof urine sample bottles used at the Sochi Games were not adult-proof. He detailed the steps taken to cover up positive tests, and showed that systemic doping had touched a wide range of Russian sports.

His report prompted WADA to call for the exclusion of the entire Russian delegation. A coalition of national anti-doping organizations, including the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, also advocated a blanket ban.

The IOC's Executive Board promptly abdicated responsibility and punted the dirty work of determining one-by-one which Russian athletes were clean to their respective international sport federations.

McLaren, a veteran arbitrator who generally comes across as a measured academic rather than a firebrand, is deeply disturbed by that outcome.

"Look at what is there and what the data is and make a decision on that basis and don't turn it into what it isn't -- a doping results management investigation of specific athletes," McLaren told The Guardian.

He also took issue with continued references to his report as "allegations," a term Bach repeated Thursday.

"I wouldn't put anything in the report that I didn't have evidence of and wouldn't meet the criminal standard in any court around the world," McLaren said.

Bach defended the process again Thursday with a rhetorical question: "Can you hold any athlete responsible for the wrongdoing of his or her country?" That misses the point. The athletes and national machinery are too intertwined at this point to separate with any fairness or logic. It defies belief that a government-sports-industrial complex would open its doping toolbox to some sports and not others, especially when that complex was succeeding at hoodwinking the world.

Handing off to the international federations was specious from the start. Did anyone really expect individual sports fiefdoms to buck Russia when the IOC wouldn't? Or that fencing would defy the Russian oligarch who serves as its president? Judo made Russian president Vladimir Putin its honorary president, and swimming conferred its highest honor on him.

It will be interesting to see how the Russian athletes are received Friday. However, their entrance will not be the most dramatic of the evening. That distinction will belong to the Refugee Olympic Team, a group of athletes the IOC granted special dispensation to compete.

The Refugee Team is an example of the spectacular symbolism that sport can provide, and illustrates that the IOC can bend and shape the eligibility rules for its showcase event any way it wishes.

Yuliya Stepanova could have been shown that same consideration by being allowed to run the 800-meter event in neutral colors. She is rusty and injured and not a medal threat. It would have been an easy gesture, a way to thank her and her husband for exposing corruption and becoming forced exiles.

Instead, the IOC interviewed her by phone and twisted her words. Asked whether she would compete under the Russian flag, Stepanova said she would, but didn't think she would be welcome, given the level of hostility against her and her husband. The ensuing IOC statement portrayed her as unwilling.

Since she's not here, we will be left to wonder what Thomas Bach would see if he looked into her eyes.