Olympic committee must send a clear message against Russians
EARLIER this month Oleksandr Usyk said: “The medals that Russian athletes are going to win are medals of blood, deaths and tears.” When a world heavyweight champion with Usyk’s credentials speaks on the issue of Russian participation at Paris 2024, it would pay for the International Olympic Committee to listen.
This, remember, is a former Olympic boxing gold medallist as well as a frontline defender of Ukraine.
For the IOC, considering a route for Russian participation at next year’s Olympics, Usyk’s words should ring loudly in their ears.
And as the war grinds on in Ukraine, they should serve as a powerful reminder to the wider sporting community of why it cannot allow its sanctions on Russia to unravel.
The temptation may be to accept the situation as it is as the new normal.the bans on Russian teams competing internationally have been in place for almost a year yet, on the surface, have done little good.the missiles continue to rain down.the gestures, for that is what they are, seem so flimsy compared to the tanks ofvladimir Putin’s war machine.
Kicking Zenit St Petersburg out of the Champions League has not persuaded the Russian president to rethink his plan to reunite the Soviet Union by force so why bother?
Well, if we row back now then what is the message being sent to Moscow? That invading a sovereign nation is somehow acceptable and that we are happy to turn a blind eye and play on while you pound innocent civilians across your border?
The IOC cannot be seen to be relaxing the hardline catch-all stance it adopted at last March’s winter paralympics in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s initial aggression.
It is why the All-england Club, having taken the decision to ban
Russian and Belarusian players from Wimbledon last year, has no choice but to maintain their position as well.
While it would be preferable if sport and politics stayed in their own lanes, the reality is that they are hopelessly intertwined.
If the sporting ban did not matter, why would Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy be working so hard to maintain it? Maintaining Russia’s pariah status, on a sporting level, counts.
Global sport is soft power heaven.there is not much which pulls a country together to quite the same extent with the grim exception of war.
As Putin himself once observed: “Victories in sport do more to cement the nation than 100 political slogans”.
And few sporting events are as valuable in that sense as an Olympics.
TO be considering allowing Russians in next year – even under a neutral flag and with its anthem banned – is both naive and insulting. Naive in that it ignores the reality of how the Putin regime would spin their success.
And insulting to the real neutral athletes competing under the IOC flag – refugees from war-torn lands rather than warmongers.
Athletes do not lose their identity just because they lose their flag.
As Australian Open tennis champion Aryna Sabalenka (left) observed in Melbourne after her nationless victory – ‘I think everyone still knows I’m a Belarusian player’.
Zelenskyy has called the neutral flag blood-stained and Ukraine has threatened to boycott the Games if ‘white Russians’ are allowed to march into the Stade de France beneath it.that is not a look the IOC should want to entertain.
Until the conflict ends, the Russians – in whatever guise – should stay out in the cold.
It is rough on the athletes themselves. It is possible that, inwardly at least, a competitor can be from Russia yet stand against the crimes being committed in the country’s name.
Athletes like pole vaulter Anzhelika Sidorova, a silver medallist at the Tokyo Games, will have trained and sacrificed and dreamed of Paris just like her fellow competitors around the globe.
But while the monstrous war grinds on there is a bigger picture at play and it is her unfortunate fate to be subsumed within it.
Everything is relative after all. Ukrainian decathletevolodymyr Androshchuk could have been competing in Paris next year. He won’t be now.the 22-year-old was killed in action near Bakhmut three weeks ago.
More than 200 Ukrainian athletes and coaches have died defending their country.
Sporting ostracisation will not bring an end to this terrible war on its own but that does not mean just giving up. Every little helps.
The IOC must stand firm.*