CDS (II) 2021 General Knowledge · Question 119 of 120

Correct — A, Russian Olympic Committee. Russian athletes competed at the Tokyo Games under the designation ROC, standing for Russian Olympic Committee, and under that committee's flag rather than the national one. The reason lies in doping. The World Anti-Doping Agency banned Russia on 9 December 2019 for four years after finding that anti-doping laboratory data had been manipulated; on 17 December 2020 the Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the penalty to two years and defined it as a bar on the use of the Russian name, flag and anthem, while allowing uniforms to carry the word Russia and the national colours. A fragment of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto stood in for the anthem, approved by the International Olympic Committee on 22 April 2021 after an earlier proposal had been rejected. Competing in that form, the ROC finished fifth on the table with twenty gold, twenty-eight silver and twenty-three bronze — seventy-one medals in all.

• (b)Russian Federal Committee — Not a designation used by any Olympic delegation. The three wrong options are variations on the correct phrase, which is the standard way of building this kind of question.
• (c)Russian Sports Committee — Also invented. The point of the sanction was that the national name could not be used, so only the name of the national Olympic committee remained available.
• (d)Russian Republican Committee — Another plausible-sounding but non-existent name. If three of four options are near-identical variants, the one you have actually seen in the medal tables is the answer.

A national Olympic committee is the body that fields a country's team, and it is a separate legal entity from the state. That distinction is what made this arrangement possible — athletes could not represent the Russian Federation, but they could be entered by its Olympic committee, so individuals who were themselves not implicated in the doping findings were able to compete while the country's symbols stayed out of the arena.

Two things are worth remembering beyond the name itself. The first is that Tokyo was not the first Games at which Russian athletes competed under a neutral formula — a similar arrangement had been used at the winter Games of 2018 — so the exam-relevant point is the specific label used in 2021. The second is the timeline, because it is asked in its own right: the WADA decision in December 2019, the arbitration ruling in December 2020 that halved the term and defined what was barred, and the substitution of Tchaikovsky for the anthem in April 2021. The sanction expired in December 2022, and Russia's participation in later Games has been shaped by different decisions taken after the invasion of Ukraine.

• Russian athletes competed at the Tokyo Games as ROC, the Russian Olympic Committee, under that committee's flag.
• The World Anti-Doping Agency banned Russia on 9 December 2019 for four years over manipulated anti-doping data.
• The Court of Arbitration for Sport reduced the ban to two years on 17 December 2020 and limited it to the use of the Russian name, flag and anthem.
• Uniforms were allowed to display the word Russia and the national colours.
• A fragment of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 replaced the anthem, approved by the International Olympic Committee on 22 April 2021; the ROC finished fifth with 20 gold, 28 silver and 23 bronze.

• Assuming the athletes were barred; individual Russians competed, and won heavily, under the committee's name.
• Confusing the four-year WADA ban with the two-year term the arbitration court substituted.
• Picking one of the invented committee names because it sounds official; the real designation is the national Olympic committee's own.

As a straight naming item, or inside a statements question on the Tokyo Games and their sanctions and new sports.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Russian athletes competed at the Tokyo Olympic Games under the flag of

  • (a)the Russian Olympic Committee
  • (b)the United Nations
  • (c)the International Olympic Committee
  • (d)no flag at all

  Answer(a) the Russian Olympic Committee — the arbitration ruling barred the Russian name, flag and anthem, leaving the national Olympic committee's own designation available.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The body whose December 2020 ruling reduced the sanction on Russia from four years to two was

  • (a)The International Olympic Committee
  • (b)The Court of Arbitration for Sport
  • (c)The United Nations General Assembly
  • (d)The World Health Organization

  Answer(b) The Court of Arbitration for Sport — it halved the World Anti-Doping Agency's four-year ban and defined the sanction as a bar on the name, flag and anthem.