“The ethical dilemma of the 2024 Olympic Games,” says a female voice in the video that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shared on Twitter on Wednesday: “Should Russian athletes be banned from competing in Paris?”
A rhetorical question, from a Ukrainian perspective. The country is campaigning against Russian participation in the 2024 Summer Games and has even threatened a boycott if Russian athletes are allowed to participate. But not a rhetorical question for Thomas Bach, the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In January, the IOC said it was “investigating” whether Russian and Belarusian athletes could participate in the Paris event “under strict conditions of neutrality” – no flag and anthem, and without “active support” for the war.
It is clearly a different course than in February 2022. At that time, the IOC still advised all sports associations worldwide not to admit Russian and Belarusian athletes at all. An exceptional step needed to “protect the integrity of sport worldwide”, said the organization at the time.
Propaganda
Ever since Bach – who won Olympic gold with the West German fencing team in Montreal in 1976 – once again opened the door for Russian and Belarusian athletes, there has been heated debate over whether to participate. This Friday, Minister Conny Helder (Sport, VVD) will discuss the issue with 34 colleagues. In addition to EU ministers, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada also participate in these consultations.
Ukraine finds allies in countries such as Poland, the Baltic states and Norway. They strongly reject any Russian presence at the Games. “Sport is a Russian propaganda machine, to ignore that means to side with aggression,” wrote the prime minister of EstoniaKaja Kallas, in January on Twitter.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, also left this week told news channel France Info that she does not want to see a Russian delegation during the Games “as long as it rains bombs on Ukraine”. Hidalgo previously called neutral participation another option, but now she said that participating under a neutral flag “actually does not exist”.
But the United States is slowing down. The country does not reject Russian participation in advance, as long as it is “absolutely clear” that Russian and Belarusian athletes compete under a neutral flag. The US Olympic and Paralympic Committee USOPC also sees the benefit of the ‘neutral route’. American athletes have “a deep desire” to “compete against the best athletes in the world,” USOPC president Gene Sykes wrote in a letter received by the AP news agency last week. NOC-NSF also does not necessarily reject any participation of Russians under a neutral flag, although the Dutch sports umbrella organization does “concerns about implementation and sustainability”.
Russia, meanwhile, just wants to prepare for the Paris Games. The Russian sports world has found shelter in Asia. Russia, which is geographically both European and Asian, was given permission in January to compete in Olympic qualifying tournaments in Asia instead of Europe.
‘Political neutrality’
However many points of view there are, ultimately the IOC decides on the course of events in Paris. IOC President Bach will have his hands full in the near future with the Russia-Ukraine issue, which once again shows that the Olympic adage of political neutrality often proves difficult in practice.
Bach personally is known to dislike boycotts. As a fencer, he lost Olympic participation after West Germany, despite its own fierce opposition, joined the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Games. It was the largest in the history of the Games: more than sixty countries declined to participate because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That experience made Bach realize “that a boycott is useless”.
In January Bach said that “isolating” all Russians, regardless of their views on the war, is “contrary to the Olympic Charter,” although this has happened in the past to athletes from South Africa during apartheid. In addition, exclusion on the basis of nationality would only constitute discrimination.
A difficult practical issue is to what extent a Russian athlete can be neutral. It is risky for Russians to distance themselves from the Russian regime. Moreover, no one can prevent President Putin from showing off with medals from Russian athletes, even under a neutral flag.
In addition, many Russian athletes train at associations that are affiliated with the army and therefore with the Russian state – there is no question of neutrality in that case.
Incidentally, Russian athletes already came out of the previous Olympic Games under a neutral flag, as a sanction for state-supported doping.
It is still unclear when the IOC will make a decision. In any case, Bach tried to slow down the Ukrainian lobby on Thursday. In a letter to the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, he called a boycott of the Games premature, as Russian participation “has not even been discussed in concrete terms yet”. For that reason, he called Ukraine’s “public influence” on IOC members “very regrettable, to say the least”. According to Bach, a majority of the IOC members would agree.
Meanwhile, President Zelensky, in turn, continues to pressure Bach. Last February, he invited the IOC president to visit the Ukrainian front “to see with your own eyes that neutrality does not exist.” Bach has not yet made use of this invitation.