The President of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, denounced Ukrainian threats to boycott the 2024 Olympics in Paris if Russian and Belarusian athletes participate, who “go against the fundamentals of the Olympic movement”according to a letter revealed this Thursday, February 9 by the Ukrainian Olympic Committee.
Paris 2024: between neutral banner and boycott threats, the delicate question of the return of Russian athletes
The distribution of this letter comes on the eve of a conference bringing together the sports ministers of several countries on Friday organized by London, on the presence of these athletes at the Paris Games.
“The boycotts have not achieved their political objectives”
In this response, dated January 31, to the multiple calls from kyiv to exclude the representatives of the two countries, even under a neutral banner, Thomas Bach also assures that the “pressures” Ukrainians are perceived as “extremely regrettable” by “the vast majority” National Olympic Committees (NOCs) and international federations.
According to Thomas Bach, “the NOC of Ukraine certainly does not enjoy the support or solidarity of the vast majority of stakeholders in the Olympic movement”. “And as history has shown, previous boycotts failed to achieve their political goals and served only to punish athletes” of the countries concerned, continues the German, himself deprived of the defense of his Olympic title in team foil by Berlin’s boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
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The IOC boss also recalls that any sporting boycott “is a violation of the Olympic Charter”without however explicitly mentioning sanctions, while North Korea was deprived by the IOC of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing for not having sent a team to those of Tokyo in 2021.
Finally, Thomas Bach ensures that the participation under neutral banner of Russian and Belarusian athletes in the 2024 Olympics “has not even been discussed in concrete terms yet”thus qualifying as “premature” kyiv’s efforts to prevent it. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in late February 2022, athletes from both countries have been banned from most world events.
Support Front
But the IOC set fire to the powder at the end of January, by proposing a roadmap to organize the return of these athletes under a neutral flag, provided that they did not have “not actively supported the war in Ukraine”. “No athlete should be banned from competition on the basis of their passport alone”assured the executive of this body.
This position is unacceptable for kyiv, which immediately threatened a boycott, accusing the Olympic body of being “a promoter of war, murder and destruction”. Since then, a front has been organized in support of kyiv, even if only a handful of states are considering a boycott, such as Estonia and Poland. Latvia has thus warned that it will not “not to participate in the Games alongside the aggressor country”.
In early February, Polish Sports Minister Kamil Bortniczuk said he expected around 40 countries to oppose the participation of Russians and Belarusians at Friday’s conference. The United States, on the other hand, came out in favor of the neutral banner compromise. For France and the city of Paris, organizer of these Games, the question is more and more sensitive.
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The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, visiting this Thursday in kyiv, spoke out against the participation of Russian athletes “as long as Russia continues to wage war on Ukraine”after having forbidden their coming “under a neutral banner”in order not “deprive athletes of their competition”.
French President Emmanuel Macron also said he had ” speak “ with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky of a possible exclusion of Russian athletes from the Games, specifying that he would personally decide “in the summer”. And the various protagonists return the responsibility for a decision on this subject.
The IOC, which traditionally sends its convocations to the national Olympic committees a year before the Games, insists that it is the international sports federations which remain “the only authorities” governing their competitions at the Olympic Games. The said federations remain silent for the moment.
