Santtu Silvennoinen
Allowing Russians to Paris may cause a Ukrainian boycott, writes Santtu Silvennoinen.
The president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach (left), has close relations with Vladimir Putin. EPA / AOP
Vladimir Putin’s poodle Thomas Bach made the most disgusting decision of his sports management career when he approved the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the Paris Games.
The decision is a big win for the sports-mad Putin and a big loss for Western democracies.
The Russians, who during Putin’s war of aggression were mostly under the “surveillance” of the haphazard Russian anti-doping operator Rusada, got the news from Paris more than six months before the start of the five-ring games. Half a year is the World Anti-Doping Agency’s Wada grace period for, for example, those athletes who make a comeback after quitting.
Doping control is only one side path in the shock solution that came on Friday.
The big picture is that Bach and many other decision-makers of the International Olympic Committee travel on Putin’s highway.
The protests against Vladimir Putin and the IOC will intensify with Friday’s decision. PDO
Back in 2022, when the war of aggression in Ukraine began, almost all sports federations and IOC decision-makers put Russian and Belarusian athletes on ice.
In Europe, the various Olympic committees even hinted at a boycott if the Russians were allowed to compete.
This was a jumble of words. No European Olympic Committee will stay out of Paris – and it would really be of no use.
What is Ukraine doing? It wouldn’t be surprising if the blue-yellow national team pulled the teams out of Paris because of Bach and his partners’ decision.
It will be a sad sight if the best high jumper in the world at the moment, Jaroslava Mahučih, and the former number one Maria Lasitskene meet at the high jump venue in Paris.
Sebastian Coe is the president of the International Association of Athletics Federations. EPA / AOP
The International Association of Athletics Federations WA has been very strict with the Russians. Team Putin was on the shelf even before the war in Ukraine due to the country’s repeated doping problems.
Is it the case that June’s European Athletics Championships in Rome will be held without the Russians, but a month and a half later they will be in Paris?
Last summer in Budapest, WA chairman Sebastian Coe answered Iltalehti’s question as follows:
– Since the war continues, we have no reason to change our previous position. I don’t have a crystal ball from which I can see when the war in Ukraine will end, the Briton said.
Coe is a potential candidate to succeed Bach at the helm of the IOC. Will the terrier’s guts be preserved or will he too turn yellow to become Putin’s lap dog?
At the Melbourne Olympic Games in 1956, a bloody water polo match was played between Hungary and the Soviet Union. Pictured is Ervin Zador from Hungary. PDO
In the decision of the International Olympic Committee, it was announced that the Russian and Belarusian teams will not make it to the Olympic Games in Paris. The solution is whitewashing, because in many team sports the qualifiers have already been held and the participating countries have been cemented.
Fortunately so, because otherwise the Bloodbath in the water polo pool at the 1956 Games in Melbourne could have happened again.