RIO DE JANEIRO — Finally, after a week of the most impertinent questions possible, Thomas Bach, the embattled International Olympic Committee president, was about to field a friendly one on Thursday.
Day after day, reporters and athletes had questioned his motives and inaction, demanding to know why he and the executive board of the I.O.C. voted to let many Russian athletes compete in Rio despite truly, deeply, madly persuasive evidence of state-sponsored doping.
Then a woman from Russian state television bounded to her feet in the airport-hangar-like press space here. She smiled softly at Bach.