Despite ban, Russian athletes flourishing
TOKYO — Thousands of athletes from around the globe paraded into Olympic Stadium for the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Games, all but one team proudly carrying its nation’s flag.
Late in the procession, a large contingent nattily outfitted in red and black enthusiastically made its way across the stadium field. Two athletes held a pole flying a white flag that featured red, white and blue flames above the Olympic rings. Others behind them waved smaller versions of the same flag.
The athletes and officials were from Russia, but there was no visible sign of their country’s traditionally recognizable symbols.
In the aftermath of 2019 sanctions levied against Russia for state-sponsored doping, the International Olympic Committee determined that while Russian athletes could compete in these Games and the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, they could not do so under their country’s banner. They would be without their flag and, should they win gold medals, without their national anthem.
Russian athletes are competing as ROC, an acronym for “Russian Olympic Committee.”
When ROC athletes win gold medals, they stand atop podiums while Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 plays.
The IOC’s “quasi-compromise position” to allow Russian athletes to compete as ROC is “a bit odd,” said Angela Schneider, director of Western University’s International Centre for Olympic Studies in Canada.
“It really is a touchy balancing act,” said Schneider, a 1984 Olympic silver medalist in rowing. “And I can understand why people might be confused or are trying to figure out what’s going on.”
Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s prime minister when the ban was announced, dismissed the ban as “a continuation of the anti-Russian hysteria that has already grown chronic,” according to a report from Russia’s Tass state news agency.
This is not the first time that Russian athletes are competing without their country’s name.
In 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the breakup of the Soviet Union, many Russian athletes competed for “The Unified Team” at the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France, and the 1992 Barcelona Games.
At the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 168 Russian athletes competed as “Olympic Athletes from Russia.” They wore neutral uniforms and participated under the Olympic flag.
But members of Russia’s gold-medal winning hockey team mocked the sanctions by singing Russia’s national anthem from the medal podium.
“They just defied the IOC,” said Bill Mallon, past president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, who is with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee in Japan.
Three years later, Russian athletes are competing as ROC.
Mark Dyreson, a professor and sports historian at Penn State, said the IOC’s decision was “a very strange animal, both unique and not unique at the same time.”
“They wanted to punish Russia, but they realized Russia is really important to a good Olympics,” Dyreson said. “So, the slap on the wrist of no anthem, no flag, you know it’s not really the Russian nation doing this. But I don’t think they’re fooling anybody.”
Beach volleyball player Konstantin Semenov played in the 2012 and 2016 Olympics for Russia. Now he is competing for ROC.
On Monday, after he and partner Ilya Leshukov defeated a team from Australia, Semenov was asked what it felt like to compete for ROC but not Russia. He said in English that he did not “mind the situation for ROC and Russia,” and that he was focused on making the most of his training.
“This is the Olympic Games,” he said, adding, “together all countries. … It’s Olympics. It doesn’t matter.”
By any name, it seems, Russian athletes remain elite. As of Saturday evening, the U.S. had won 46 medals, China 46, ROC 37 and Japan 30.
“The ghost of the Soviet empire is still there,” Dyreson said. “Unlike in other arenas where Russia has slid in terms of power, in Olympic sport they’re still doing pretty well.”