Weightlifting is set to become the first Olympic sport to take a global championships back into Russia, since that country invaded Ukraine in 2022.
Over the weekend, the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF) unveiled that the 2030 Weightlifting Championships will take place in Russia's capital city of Moscow (while also announcing the hosts of three other world championships).
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Indeed, this comes only four months after the IWF made Russian athletes eligible once again to compete in its events – they had also been banned by the sport's authorities since early 2022.
For the last 4.5 years, no world championships in any Olympic sport have taken place in Russia.
Jose Quinones, general secretary at the IWF, commented: "All the bids we received were excellent and we are sure that the championships in your respective countries will be a huge success."
The event will also be a qualifying tournament for weightlifting at the 2032 Summer Olympic Games in Brisbane, Australia.
The Russian Weightlifting Federation, meanwhile, stated that it is "the first Olympic sports federation to succeed in bringing a top-level official competition back to the country in many years."
All this from the IWF follows on from the International Olympic Committee (IOC) provisionally lifting its suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee, in July. Russian athletes have actually been banned from competing at the Olympics under their own flag since 2016, because of state-sponsored doping offences prior to the invasion of Ukraine.
The ROC was invited back in from the cold after accepting that it no longer controlled sporting bodies in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine.
However, the IOC’s decision does come with some caveats. All Russian athletes returning to international competition must meet relevant anti-doping requirements, while the IOC will not organise events in Russia or invite Russian government or state officials to its events.
The Olympic body will also decide on the display of the Russian flag, anthem, colours, or any identifications for the Olympic Games “at the appropriate time.”
Following the IOC's decision, an appeal against it was immediately filed by Ukraine.
Only 27 athletes from Russia competed across the 2024 Olympics in Paris and the 2026 Winter Games in Milano Cortina – as neutrals – after undergoing a vetting process to ensure they did not publicly support the war in Ukraine.
This has now been scrapped, with Russian athletes only having to abide by the values of the Olympic charter.
The IOC has, however, left it up to individual sports federations to decide on whether Russia should be allowed to host major events again; out of these, the IWF has been the first to stick its head above the parapet on the issue.
