Paris (CNSNews.com) – Less than 500 days before the Summer Olympics opens in Paris, the question of whether Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials will be allowed to take part remains unresolved, and the host nation says its leaving the decision to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Against the backdrop of the invasion of Ukraine, countries opposed to the participation of athletes and officials such as competition judges from Russia and its close ally Belarus are pressing the IOC for a decision, and the Lausanne, Switzerland-based organization is discussing the matter further this week.
While France says it’s up to the IOC to decide, it has up to now favored excluding Russian and Belarusian competitors, a position also held by Britain, the U.S., and dozens of other governments.
In January, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo told France Info TV that she was in favor of Russian participation “under a neutral banner,” so as not to deprive the athletes of the chance to compete.
But in an apparent shift, last month Hidalgo said that “the decision is up to the IOC” but made clear that she does not want to see Russian athletes at the 2024 Games. (She did not mention the Belarusians on either occasion.)
“As long as there is this war, this Russian aggression against Ukraine, it is not possible to act as if nothing has happened and have a Russian delegation in Paris while the bombs continue to rain down on Ukraine,” she told the same television network.
Several days after Russia invaded its neighbor in February last year, the IOC called on international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international competition
Later in the year, U.N. human rights experts warned the IOC that barring athletes and officials solely on the basis of their nationality would be discriminatory.
In January this year, the IOC executive board said in a statement it was now exploring the possibility for a pathway for athletes from the two countries to take part in international competition – not specifically the Paris Olympics – under a neutral banner and on condition they were not “actively supporting” the invasion of Ukraine.
The IOC said no decision has yet been made regarding the Paris Games, but a group of more than 30 countries – including the United States, France, and Britain – issued a joint statement expressing concern about the organization’s stance.
“[I]n Russia and Belarus sport and politics are closely intertwined,” it said. “We have strong concerns on how feasible it is for Russian and Belarusian Olympic athletes to compete as ‘neutrals’ – under the IOC’s conditions of no identification with their country – when they are directly funded and supported by their states (unlike, for example, professional tennis players).”
“The strong links and affiliations between Russian athletes and the Russian military are also of clear concern,” it said. “Our collective approach throughout has therefore never been one of discrimination simply on the basis of nationality, but these strong concerns need to be dealt with by the IOC.”
The statement ended by saying Russia and Belarus had the solution in their own hands – “ending the war they started.”
Meanwhile the debate continues in the host country.
“Athletes’ participation should in no way be a consequence of what is happening politically,” French IOC member and former Olympic hurdles gold medalist Guy Drut told France Info TV.
“We will see what will happen in the beginning of 2024. But for now, I see no reason for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be deprived of participation.”
Drut said the athletes concerned had been preparing for the event “for years,” and for some the opportunity to compete at that level may never come again.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Paris in February, indicated that he would speak “next summer” about Russians’ participation in the Games. Zelenskyy earlier appealed to Macron to bar Russian athletes from the event.
Since the Ukraine war started athletes from both countries have been banned from many global sporting events, as international federations followed the original IOC recommendation.
According to Lukas Aubin, research director at the Paris-based French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs, the ban has not been universal.
Although the IOC soon after the invasion began called on all sports federations to exclude Russia and Belarus from world sport, “each federation has made a choice on its side,” Aubin wrote on the institute’s website. “Some followed [the recommendation], like athletics, others did not, like tennis.”
(Patrick Goodenough contributed to this story.)