As well rule that a nation largely excluded from hosting and/or competing in world sport, on account of mass murder and torture of civilians in a sovereign foreign neighbour, be pardoned because they politely observe the regulations in basketball and gymnastics.

Such a deplorable moral fudge will have Olympic founder Pierre de Coubertin wincing in his grave.  

The proposition that drug-innocent competitors should not be impugned for Vladimir Putin’s continuing rampant atrocities in Ukraine emanates from the Olympic Council of Asia, led by Acting President Randhir Singh.  

In reverse, it is like finding a shepherd who tenderly guards his flock but enjoys roast sheep dog for dinner.

The administrative ethical principle that athletes are not to be held liable for the evils of politicians is espoused by IOC President Thomas Bach, himself excluded from defending his Montreal Olympic team fencing title at Moscow by West Germany’s affiliation to the US boycott.  

Yet, Putin’s evil is on another level: and fulsomely backed by the Kremlin’s military squad, by the Orthodox Church and multiple civilians, if not mothers of enlisted, often doomed troops.

A moral red line was unavoidably and inevitably bridged by the IOC in 1987: the admittance of professionals, transforming what for nearly a century had been exclusively amateur jousting into - for nationalistic major nations - a commercial industry, further enforced by sponsorship injection such as John Major’s Lottery funding.  

Where now did ethical principles stand?

In the wake of two World Wars, it was axiomatic that instigators were excluded from Antwerp 1920 and London 1948, though by the time of Soviet Union military intervention against attempted political breakaway by Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968 and Afghanistan in 1980, the IOC felt unempowered to contemplate suspension.  

Yet why not now, with aggression on an intolerable scale?

Bach well knows the IOC is treading a morality tightrope, asserting that there will be protracted ‘examination’ on including Russia/Belarus in Paris qualifying events next year.  

It is by no means unlikely that some nations - notably Poland, remembering their own heroic industrial campaign to elude Soviet dictatorship in the eighties - might boycott the Paris Games if the criminal invasion remains unresolved.

What should be a categoric moral stance is corrupted by political language such as French President Emmanuel Macron claiming "athletes from warring countries bring sport to life". 

He would, wouldn’t he, with Paris being host?

The most detached opinion is heard from the chief executive of an admittedly self-proclaimed athletes' union, Global Athlete.  

Rob Kohler observes that the IOC decision - to admit felon states - will be "on the wrong side history".  

The IOC’s acceptance of 'clean' Russia/Belarus athletes at Rio, Tokyo and Beijing, in non-national attire, is compliant heresy: do come along… so long as you change your shirt.

It will also have rudely surprised the All-England Club to hear that Bach is critical of the Conservative government for backing Wimbledon’s decision to bar Russia/Belarus competitors this year: Wimbledon’s honourable response to humiliation of Ukraine.  

Bach is siding with the miniscule politicians of the ATP, which threatens to remove Wimbledon from the tournament circuit should the club repeat the exclusion: thereby depriving a handful of morally bankrupt millionaires of their world ranking points.  

Poor dears: commercialism thwarted. What outrage. No pause to consider the plight of Sergei Bubka, iconic Olympic pole-vaulter and former President of Ukraine's Olympic Committee: foraging to find his successors, say, some drinking water, never mind ranking points.  

As would-be triallist and subsequently commentator, I have championed the Olympics for seven decades.  

Possible disintegration hovers on the horizon.