Russia has just been knocked out The decision made by the International Olympic Committee’s board on Friday to allow individual Russian athletes as neutral athletes to next summer’s Paris Olympics.
According to Russian sports influencers, the conditions set for the country’s representative athletes at the Paris Summer Olympics are “discriminatory” because Russians are required to compete neutrally – without flags, emblems and the national anthem. The IOC also requires the Russians not to actively support the war in Ukraine or be affiliated with the military.
– The conditions are discriminatory, they are against the principles of sport. This is harming the Olympics, not so much Russian sports, commented the Russian sports minister Oleg Matytsin for news agency AFP.
He still said that those athletes who are able to meet the Olympic conditions will go to Paris.
– Of course, those athletes who have achieved success in competitions and the right to participate will compete in the Olympics, said the Russian Minister of Sports.
Russian gymnastics coach Valentina Rodionenko downplayed the significance of the IOC’s decision.
– There is no point in talking about any breakthrough, Rodionenko said.
– When the IOC allowed our athletes to participate in the Olympics on a limited basis, it still maintained the same extremely humiliating conditions that were previously outlined in the recommendations of the international sports federations. I believe that we do not need to go to Paris under such conditions, Rodionenko continued.
In athletics, there is no change for the Russians
During this year, several Olympic sports have eased the restrictions, as a result of which Russian and Belarusian athletes have returned to international competitions under certain conditions.
However, athletics, the biggest sport of the Olympics, does not open the door for the Russians to return.
Finnish member of the board of the International Association of Athletics Federations (WA). Antti Pihlakoski has said that Russian track and field athletes are currently hindered by both Russia’s extensive state-led doping program, which was revealed in 2015, and the war of aggression against Ukraine.
At the World Championships in Athletics in August, the chairman of WA Sebastian Coe said that it would have been “unthinkable” for Russians and Belarusians to compete in Budapest.
– The death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the deaths of around 185 athletes, has only increased my resolve in this matter. The situation is intolerable, and that’s why I’m not going to change my views in the near future, Coe already stated in early autumn.
Of the 4,600 athletes worldwide who have so far qualified for the Summer Games in Paris, eight are Russian and three have Belarusian passports.
More than 60 Ukrainian athletes have passed the Olympic screening. The IOC estimates that Ukraine will send a total of around 150 athletes to the upcoming summer games.
Russia sent 335 athletes to the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where it won 20 golds and a total of 71 medals. With these prospects, at most only a few dozen athletes will compete in individual sports in Paris. Russia still has a ban on participation in team sports.
In Ukraine, the IOC’s decision was declared shameful
Ukraine’s foreign minister considers the IOC’s decision on Russian and Belarusian athletes shameful.
– Such a decision weakens the Olympic principles, he writes Dmytro Kuleba in social media.
Minister of Sports of Ukraine Matvi Bidnyi snarled in his country’s media and considered the IOC’s decision irresponsible. According to him, Russian athletes also “bear part of the responsibility” for the deaths of Ukrainians in Russia’s war of aggression.
Finland’s fencing greatness Niko Vuorinen confirms to Urheilu that there is currently no known Russian athlete going to Paris.
– Most of the Russian fencers were previously banned from participating in the army. In my own sport, kalpa fencing, only two from the whole country got the right to participate. They haven’t even had competitors from the qualifying period in any World Cup, explains Vuorinen.
– The IOC’s decision did not surprise, it was visible before. It’s a shame it happened like this. If the Ukrainians don’t boycott the Olympics either, why should Finland or other countries, Vuorinen said.