Olympic chief Thomas Bach’s refusal to boot entire Russian team out of Rio will cause chaos

IT WAS the understatement of the century by Olympic chief Thomas Bach after refusing to boot the entire Russia team out of Rio.

“This may not please everybody,” he offered.

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Apart from Russian president Vladimir Putin and his sidekick Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko, it is hard to think this pleases ANYONE.

Even Russian sport risks civil war, with its track and field stars banned from the Games while 318 others board the team plane to Brazil.

In another move set to cause legal chaos, Bach, who has close links with Putin, revealed any Russian sports star who has tested positive in the past cannot go to Rio, even if they have served a ban.

And yet American sprinter Justin Gatlin will be there, despite serving two doping bans.

The International Olympic Committee is not so much passing the buck, as passing the syringe.

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Richard McLaren’s bombshell report warned World Anti-Doping Agency chiefs that Russia was guilty of state-sponsored doping in THIRTY Olympic and Paralympic sports.

WADA recommended Russia be booted out — a message that was about as loud and clear as it gets.

But the IOC bigwigs bottled it. Instead, they will leave it up to each sports’ governing bodies to decide if they should ban Russian competitors — like the IAAF did under Seb Coe in athletics.

So 26 international federations have been left to sort out this mess over the coming days.

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Delegating such controversial decisions to governing bodies will also pit sport against sport and risks creating huge inconsistencies.

The IAAF kicked Russia out of world athletics last November over a string of doping allegations.

But last night tennis chiefs cleared the seven-strong Russian tennis to take part in the Games.

The International Weightlifting Federation are on the verge of a blanket ban on Russia due to a huge numbers of positive tests in their sport.

Yet judo bosses are happy to let their competitors go to the Rio Games. But how will Russian athletics’ poster girl Yelena Isinbayeva, one of 68 athletes who lost appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, feel about being left at home while 318 ‘team-mates’ get on the plane?

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The IOC will insist that any Russian athlete cleared to compete in Brazil will face extra out-of-competition drug tests.

But as former WADA supremo Dick Pound once told me: “You have to be guilty of stupidity to test positive close to, or during, the Olympic Games.”

Such are the sophisticated doping techniques these days that drug cheats are always one step ahead of the testers in the run-up to major championships.

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And we are just days away from the opening ceremony of the Olympics on August 5, with many teams already packing their bags to travel to training camps today.

Bach would have been mindful of the possibility of a splinter Games.

Putin had hinted Russia would stage its own competition if a blanket Rio ban went ahead, which would have raised the prospect of allies such as China or members of the former Soviet republic following.

As for the final insult? That is to ban Russian drugs whistleblower Yulia Stepanova from competing under a neutral flag in Rio because she has a doping conviction herself.

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Even the IAAF allowed her to race in the 800m at the European Championships in Amsterdam earlier this month, with president Coe sanctioning a similar move at the Olympics.

Bach, though, has invited her to fly out to the Games as a special guest of the IOC.

No doubt she cannot wait to sit in the posh seats alongside Putin and watch Russian cheats compete in other sports after they somehow managed to slip through the net.