The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) has banned Russian track and field athletes from the upcoming Rio Olympic Games. The unprecedented decision is a punishment for systematic cheating through a state-sponsored doping program and the refusal of the All-Russia Athletics Federation (RusAF) to acknowledge the problem. The decision is a blow to Russian prestige, which is increasingly invested in such competitions to boost national pride and demonstrate the country's status. Russian athletes may yet be able to compete, but only if they shun their country's flag.

Russian track and field athletes have been suspended from international competition since last November, when the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) released a report with stunning detail on a state-led program to cheat. It concluded that there was a "systematic and deeply rooted culture of cheating in Russian athletics." That report found evidence of "a mandatory state-directed manipulation of laboratory analytical results" in the Moscow lab dating back at least as far as 2011.

Subsequent revelations are almost comic: athletes actually running away from drug testers, and state security agents threatening testing officials as well as using their formidable powers to corrupt the testing process, including swapping urine samples and going so far as to punch holes in walls to get access to sample bottles. The Russian Ministry of Sport directed the state laboratory that tested samples about which to report to international authorities.