Last Friday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) authorized the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, under a neutral flag and on the condition that they did not actively support the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Only eleven “neutral individual athletes” – eight Russians and three Belarusians – are currently qualified for the next edition of the Olympic Games, from which these two countries remain excluded from the team events, the IOC said in a statement.
After the exclusion from world sport in February 2022, the Olympic body has argued that Russian and Belarusian athletes should not be punished for the actions of their countries’ governments, which today allow participation in Paris 2024, for which around 60 athletes have qualified.
In March, the IOC advised international federations to reinstate the Russians and Belarusians in their competitions under a neutral flag, but postponed its own decision on the presence in Paris in 2024 and the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan until a suitable moment. Cortina.
The Olympic organization waited to evaluate the development of the competitions, which were considered satisfactory, and the evolution of the position of the Ukrainian government, which started demanding its athletes to boycott any event involving Russians, before it was softened this summer.
If international federations followed this recommendation differently – athletics has not yet approved the recovery of Russian athletes – the 12th Olympic Summit, held on Tuesday in Lausanne (Switzerland), resulted in a clear signal from the sports world.
Representatives of international federations, 206 national Olympic committees and athletes called for a “swift” decision to allow the presence of the small number of Russian and Belarusian athletes who qualified at Paris 2024.
In September, French President Emmanuel Macron rejected the possibility of flying a Russian flag at the Olympics, denouncing the Russian regime’s “war crimes” but leaving open the participation of Russian athletes in the event, without national anthem and under a flag, neutral.
Source: DN
