Ukraine pushes for Russian Olympic ban
With next year’s Paris Olympics on the horizon and Russia’s invasion looking more like a prolonged conflict, Ukraine’s sports minister on Friday renewed a threat to boycott the games if Russia and Belarus are allowed to compete and said Kyiv would lobby other nations to join.
Such a move could lead to the biggest rift in the Olympic movement since the Cold War era.
No nation has declared it will boycott the 2024 Summer Games. But Ukraine won support from Poland, the Baltic nations and Denmark, who pushed back against an International Olympic Committee plan to allow delegations from Russia and ally Belarus to compete in Paris as “neutral athletes,” without flags or anthems.
“We cannot compromise on the admission of Russian and Belarusian athletes,” said Ukrainian Sports Minister Vadym Huttsait, who also heads its national Olympic committee, citing attacks on his country, the deaths of its athletes and the destruction of its sports facilities.
A meeting of his committee did not commit to a boycott but approved plans to try to persuade global sports officials in the next two months — including discussion of a possible boycott.
Huttsait added: “As a last option, but I note that this is my personal opinion, if we do not succeed, then we will have to boycott the Olympic Games.”
Paris will be the final Olympics under outgoing IOC head Thomas Bach, who is looking to his legacy after a tenure marked by disputes over Russia’s status — first over widespread doping scandals and now over the war in Ukraine.
Bach’s views were shaped when he was an Olympic gold medalist in fencing and his country, West Germany, took part in the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow over the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He has condemned that decision ever since.
Russia has cautiously welcomed the IOC’s decision to give it a path to the Olympics but demands it drop a condition that would leave out those athletes deemed to be “actively supporting the war in Ukraine.”
Russian Olympic Committee head Stanislav Pozdnyakov, who was a teammate of Ukraine’s Huttsait at the 1992 Olympics, called that aspect discriminatory. The IOC, which previously recommended excluding Russia and Belarus from world sports on safety grounds, now argues it cannot discriminate against them purely based on citizenship.
The leaders of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania urged the IOC to ban Russia and said a boycott was a possibility.
CALI PONDERS FLAG FOOTBALL
California officials are considering a plan to make flag football a girls’ high school sport amid soaring popularity of the game and a push to get more female athletes on the field.
The federated council of the California Interscholastic Federation — the statewide body that governs high school athletics — is expected to vote Friday on the plan at a meeting in Long Beach. If the measure passes, flag football would be an official high school sport for girls in the nation’s most populous state for the upcoming 2023-24 year.
Paula Hart Rodas, president-elect of the CIF Southern Section’s council, said the goal is to get more girls involved in high school sports and tap into a widespread love of football by many who are loath to play tackle. Southern California schools spanning from Long Beach to Corona are hoping to start teams in the fall and an approval would allow districts to add the sport to their budgets, Hart Rodas said.
RACIST TAUNTS AT HS GAME
The Jamestown (North Dakota) School District has disciplined some students after monkey noises and war whooping were aimed at basketball players from Bismarck during a game this week.
Jamestown Superintendent Robert Lech said in a statement that “a handful” of middle school and high school students were disciplined after the incident on Tuesday. He did not say how many students were involved or how they were disciplined.
Video captured the taunts coming from Jamestown’s student section when two nonwhite Bismarck players handled the ball, The Bismarck Tribune reported.