(Lausanne) Ending nine months of suspense, the International Olympic Committee on Friday authorized Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate under a neutral banner in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, under strict conditions, suggesting a very thin delegation.
Only “neutral individual” athletes will be affected who have been able to clear the qualification hurdle, do not actively support the war in Ukraine, and are not under contract with either the army or national security agencies.
Eleven of them currently meet these criteria, i.e. eight Russians and three Belarusians, the IOC said in a press release.
Conditions of participation that Russia denounced in the wake of this announcement as “discriminatory” and going “against sporting principles”, through the voice of the Russian Minister of Sports Oleg Matytsin, quoted by the TASS press agency .
However, he indicated that Russian athletes who have obtained the right to participate in the 2024 Olympics “will probably participate”.
At the same time, around sixty Ukrainians have already qualified for the Paris Games (July 26 to August 11, 2024).
The question is crucial since the prospect of seeing a Ukrainian delegation absent or very weakened in Paris has long worried the Olympic body, and would have made the presence of Russian athletes even more politically delicate, even without an anthem or flag.
After banning Russians and Belarusians from world sport at the end of February 2022, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the IOC therefore reasoned in two stages to organize their return, explaining on numerous occasions that athletes should not “ pay” for their government’s actions.
In March, the Olympic organization first recommended that international federations reinstate the Russians and Belarusians under a neutral banner in their competitions, while postponing “to an appropriate time” its decision on the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris as well as on the Olympic Games. -2026 from Milan-Cortina.
The Olympic body took the time to evaluate the progress of the competitions, judged to be generally satisfactory, and to see the position of the Ukrainian government evolve, which first required its athletes to boycott any event involving Russians before change position in July.
Again Thursday, the Ukrainian interim Minister of Sports Marviy Bidnyi explained to AFP that he did not want Russians and Belarusians at the Paris Olympics, considering their neutral flag “stained with blood” and fearing that sport would serve “propaganda purposes military “.
But he did not threaten a boycott, while several Ukrainian athletes expressed their wish to face and beat the Russians on the competition fields.
Furthermore, if the international federations followed the IOC’s recommendation in a dispersed manner – athletics in particular still refuses to reinstate the Russians – the 12th Olympic Summit organized on Tuesday in Lausanne resulted in a clear signal from the sporting world.
Representatives of international federations, the 206 national Olympic committees and athletes all called for a “rapid” decision, to allow the presence in Paris of the small number of Russian and Belarusian athletes who were able to qualify.
In a balancing act between taking into account the Ukrainian conflict and political autonomy of sport, the IOC therefore ends up reinstating athletes from both countries while maintaining sanctions against their governments.
Since February 2022, the body has banned any international event on Russian or Belarusian soil, and any presence of their anthems, flags and officials during competitions. No representative of the two States will thus be “invited or accredited for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games”.
Furthermore, on October 12, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee, now deprived of Olympic funding, for having placed five sports organizations in occupied Ukrainian regions under its authority.
Finally, recalls the Olympic organization, “at least 3,000 Ukrainian athletes and other members of the Ukrainian Olympic community” have benefited from the IOC solidarity fund to be able to train over the last twelve months.
To date, “it is expected that the Ukrainian delegation will be approximately the same size as at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics,” specifies the Lausanne body.