Sport inside
For the first time since the Corona pandemic, the powers that be in world sport are coming together in person again. The executive board of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will meet in the Indian metropolis of Mumbai from today, Thursday (October 12, 2023), and the three-day general assembly will begin on Sunday. The main question hanging over the event is: How to deal with athletes from Russia and Belarus?
The IOC executive decided to suspend the Russian National Olympic Committee (ROC). The committee cited a breach of the Olympic Charter by violating the territorial integrity of the NOC of Ukraine. However, this was not a decision about the possible participation of athletes in the Summer Games in Paris in 2024. This question will “at a given time” answered, the IOC announced.
However, the topic is urgent given that qualification for the games is already underway. “It is urgent that it is decided now,” said fencer Léa Krüger, member of the executive committee of the athletes’ representation Athletes Germany e. V., Tuesday in the Sport-inside interview. “There must be a uniform line that the IOC and all associations follow together in order to bring some peace back.”
U-turn at the IOC in March
Shortly after the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine, the IOC recommended that international sports associations exclude Russians and Belarusians from international competitions. Around a year later, in March 2023, there was a U-turn with the new recommendation to allow Russian and Belarusian individual athletes to participate as neutral individual athletes.
The conditions: You must not actively support the war and must not be under contract with the military or national security authorities. Teams should continue to be excluded, according to the recommendation.
patchwork quilt in international Sports
Some implemented the recommendation early, such as the international associations for the sports of judo, fencing and cycling. In gymnastics, the starting ban will be lifted from January 2024; there was never a starting ban in tennis anyway. In athletics and equestrian sports, however, athletes from Russia and Belarus continue to be left out.
The IOC and its President Thomas Bach argue that no individual athlete should be discriminated against because of their passport. Bach repeatedly brings forward the ideal image of apolitical games. “The mission of the Olympic Games is to unite the entire world in peaceful competition. In our fragile world of conflict, division and war, we need this unifying force more than ever.”he said in July in Paris, a year before the Summer Games there.
Bach: Decay of international sports system is threatened
The IOC appears to be divided; there are opponents of exclusion, especially in Asia and Africa. Bach even warned of drastic consequences at an event in Essen at the end of March. “If we make an exclusion based on political considerations, we are faced with the collapse of the international sports system.”
Then there is the danger that there will no longer be any real world championships, no universal Olympic Games. “We will see games from different political blocs that no longer have anything to do with the unifying nature of sport across all borders.”
Paralympics with athletes from Russia
In the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), opponents of a complete suspension of the Russian association narrowly prevailed at the end of September, with 74:65 votes and 13 abstentions. – and against the voice from Germany.
Friedhelm Julius Beucher, President of the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS), believes it is a mistake that individual athletes from Russia and Belarus are now allowed to compete at the 2024 Paralympics in Paris, albeit under a neutral flag. “The war is the same”, Beucher told Sport inside. “The murder, the rape, the injury, the destruction of landscapes – basically, warring nations have no place at the Paralympic and Olympic Games.”
Open questions regarding neutrality
Beucher considers the image of the neutral athlete to be window dressing. “Who should be neutral? Declare in Paris: I’m neutral. And then I’ll go back and let Mr. Putin put the medals on me in the Kremlin.”
The IOC also calls for neutrality, but is silent on how exactly this should be controlled. So the world associations are on their own and apply different rules. Injustices when qualifying for Paris 2024 can hardly be avoided.
As long as all of this is not clarified and “If sport is being abused as a political tool to such an extent, we believe that excluding Russian athletes is still justified,” said athlete spokeswoman Krüger, “also to protect the rights of others, especially the Ukrainian athletes.”