GENEVA, Switzerland – An outright banishment of Russians and Belarusians from world sport as the price of invading Ukraine: The International Olympic Committee’s dramatic recommendation on Monday is historic for an organization ordinarily inclined to stay away. away from politics.
The announcements are now likely to follow one another: a source familiar with the matter thus explained to AFP that FIFA were conducting “advanced discussions” to exclude Russia from the 2022 World Cup, a planetary event which it hosted in 2018.
Their potential opponents for the play-offs in March, Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden, have explained that they will not face the Russians under any circumstances.
To justify its recommendation, which comes a few days before the start of the Paralympic Games (March 4-13), the IOC highlights a “dilemma”: “While athletes from Russia and Belarus could continue to participate in sporting events , many Ukrainian athletes are prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country”.
To resolve it, it “recommends that International Sports Federations and organizers of sports events not invite or allow the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes and official representatives in international competitions”.
If the IOC were to be massively followed by international federations, Russia would join Slobodan Milosevic’s Yugoslavia and apartheid South Africa in the history of the great pariahs of international sport.
Putin stripped of Olympic medal
Another measure, symbolic but strong, the IOC also withdrew the “Olympic order” from all senior Russian officials, starting with President Vladimir Putin.
However, if “for organizational or legal reasons”, it is not possible to prevent the arrival of Russian athletes, the IOC asks that they cannot be “allowed to participate under the name of Russia or Belarus”.
The issue is particularly pressing for the Paralympic Games, which begin on Friday.
“When, in very extreme circumstances”, putting in place these measures “is not possible in the short term for organizational or legal reasons”, the “IOC leaves it to the organization concerned to find its own way”.
The International Committee “in particular looked into the next Paralympic Winter Games” and “reiterated its full support for the International Paralympic Committee (IPC)” which planned to speak on Wednesday.
Support for anti-war athletes
Another spectacular aspect of the IOC’s communication on Monday was its break with its tradition of requiring athletes to be neutral. The IOC thus hailed “the numerous calls for peace made by athletes, sports officials and members of the world Olympic community”. He “especially admires and supports the calls for peace by Russian athletes,” he continued.
Tennis player Andrey Rublev, hockey player Alex Ovechkin and cyclist Pavel Sivakov have clearly expressed their opposition to the war waged by their country. They are now threatened with having to pay a high professional price if their federations follow the recommendations of the IOC. For international footballer Fedor Smolov, this is already the case.
Without waiting for the IOC, several countries had already expressed their refusal to accept the presence of Russians on their territory to compete there.
The Champions League final was withdrawn to Saint-Petersburg by UEFA, which is preparing to break its sponsorship contract with Gazprom, and the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi was canceled seven months before its scheduled date. Two very strong measures affecting symbolic events of sports “soft power”, an assumed policy of influence in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Asked by AFP even before the new statement from the IOC, Pim Vershuuren, researcher in the geopolitics of sport, already believed that the “decisions taken this week were historic, commensurate with the shock”.
