The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has updated but not significantly altered its stance on the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes at its events.
In a document released yesterday (July 13), the Olympics’ governing body said it “has found a middle ground” for athletes from those two countries and Ukraine, which Russia invaded in February 2022.
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In the document, the IOC said that allowing governments to decide which countries were permitted to send athletes to events – such as the Paris 2024 Olympics, in less than a year’s time – “would be the end of international sport as we know it.”
The IOC has not yet made clear a definitive position on Russian and Belarusian athletes at Paris 2024, with the vast majority of sporting international federations and bodies having banned teams from those countries from their worldwide events over the last 18 months.
The IOC said it will take a decision on how to organize the Paris 2024 Olympics with regards to Russian and Belarusian participation “at the appropriate time, at its full discretion, and without being blind by the results of previous Olympic qualification competitions.”
In March the IOC told international federations that while representative teams from Russia and Belarus were banned, individual athletes from the two countries should be allowed to compete under a neutral flag.
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By GlobalDataThe IOC has now reiterated: “It cannot be up to the governments to decide which athletes can take part,” and has said the autonomy of sport in general “is threatened by a few governments" because of this issue.
The pressure on the IOC to ban even specific athletes from competing as neutrals has been growing in some quarters over recent months, however.
What is for sure, meanwhile, is that the national Olympic committees of Russia and Belarus will not take part in Paris 2024.
The IOC has claimed that “the overwhelming majority of the world's athletes respect or support the ICC’s approach.”
However, it said it had “taken note of the negative reactions” from some European countries to the idea of Russian and Belarusian athletes competing at Paris 2024, and has said some of these governments’ actions have been “deplorable.”
The body commented that it “rejects in the strongest possible terms” various “defamatory statements” by Ukrainian officials.
In the past, some Ukrainian authorities have called the IOC a “promoter of war, murder, and destruction.”
