Vladislav Larin should not be allowed to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, says Ukrainian Sports Minister Matwij Bidny. “Larin is an example of the complicity between Russian athletes and Russian occupiers,” Sports Minister Bidny told DW in an exclusive interview. “Even if the athletes do not explicitly express their opinion on the war, they express their silent solidarity with the murderers.”
The Russian taekwondo star Larin, the 2021 Olympic champion in Tokyo, called on residents of his home region to donate money for medicine and ammunition in a video. “Friends, let’s stick together and help those who defend our homeland,” Larin said in the video. The World Taekwondo Association then suspended the 28-year-old for three months. After the ban expired, Larin won a Grand Prix tournament in China. At the European qualifying tournament next March in Bulgaria, the Russian is expected to secure his ticket to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) wants to allow individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in the Summer Games in Paris as neutral athletes – without a national flag or anthem – as long as they have not actively supported the war or are under contract with the military. However, according to the Ukrainian sports minister, any “neutral” Russian starter becomes Russia’s “tool for propaganda”: “When a nation has unleashed the largest war of aggression in Europe since World War II and is trying to destroy another nation, it means the Support murder if you see these people [Anmerkung der Redaktion: die Sportler] neutral,” said Bidny.
“Sharp crack” in the Olympic values
In all of its recent communications, the IOC has sought to emphasize the Games’ “peace mission.” Earlier this month, the IOC held a series of meetings and consultations to prepare its decision. Cheick Cissé, athlete spokesman for the World Taekwondo Federation, welcomed Wladislaw Larin’s return to competition in a telephone conference with other athlete representatives. This corresponds to “the spirit of the Olympic Games,” said the Ivorian, according to participants in the telephone call.
For Vladislav Heraskevich, a Ukrainian skeleton racer who advocates for the complete exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes from international sports, such statements are nothing short of ridiculous. “If these athletes are allowed to take part in the Olympics, will there be a spirit of peace and friendship at the competitions?” he wrote to DW. “Or will the Olympics and all athletes be caught up in war propaganda? Do we as an Olympic movement want to be associated with terrorism? Admitting these athletes will create a strong rift in the values we stand for.”
IOC announces double verification
Cases like Larin’s underscore the problems the IOC is likely to face in the run-up to the Paris Games. Even if Russian and Belarusian athletes are admitted by their sports associations, the question remains whether they have connections to Russia’s ongoing war of aggression in Ukraine. In order to ensure that these athletes meet the admission criteria, the IOC says it will not only rely on information from the respective sports associations, but will also obtain an “independent assessment” of each qualified neutral athlete.
When asked by DW, an IOC spokesman said that its own review process would be carried out “in addition” to the measures taken by the international associations. The spokesman did not want to go into specific cases: “We will take care of it when it comes to us.”
Russia has described the IOC criteria as “unacceptable”. The Ukrainian Sports Minister Bidny does not want to rule out a boycott of the Olympics in his country. Ukraine will “do everything so that the International Olympic Committee listens to common sense,” Bidny told DW. “We will prove that the vast majority of Russian athletes are connected to the bloody regime. They have the same passports as the Russian occupiers who are killing Ukrainians.”
Limited number of neutral athletes
According to the IOC, only six Russian athletes have qualified for the Olympic Games so far. They include four wrestlers, two of whom – Olympic champions Saurbek Sidakov and Saur Uguyev – are also accused of supporting the Russian invasion by taking part in a televised pro-war rally in Moscow in 2022.
Wrestling’s world governing body, United World Wrestling, told the Associated Press in September that the trio’s participation in events like the one in Moscow was “not due to the athletes’ own will.” Ukrainian skeleton racer Heraskevich describes this as another example of a governing body not adhering to “weak IOC guidelines”.
Since only individual athletes and no teams from Russia and Belarus are admitted to the 2024 Games, the IOC expects a “very limited number” of neutral athletes in Paris. Estimates put the final number at a few dozen, not nearly that many like the over 300 “neutral” athletes from Russia who took part in Tokyo in 2021.
This article was adapted from English.