In a major backdown, athletes from Russia and Belarus can compete at the Paris Olympics if they hide their nationalities, writes Senior Correspondent Mike Osborne.
In a controversial and politically-contentious ruling Australian Open tennis champion Aryna Sabalenka and 2024 runner-up Daniil Medvedev could be among the 50-80 athletes from Russia and Belarus allowed to compete at the Paris Olympics.
While Russians and Belarusians must compete as neutral athletes, Israel and Palestine will have competitors in Paris taking part under their national flags, according to International Olympic Committee’s German President Thomas Bach.
“The situation between Israel and Palestine is completely different,” Bach said, adding that up to eight Palestinian athletes will be invited to compete in Paris even if they do not qualify.
Bach said the IOC had imposed sanctions against Russia because it breached the Olympic Truce by invading Ukraine on February 24, 2022, shortly after the Beijing Winter Olympics. And the Russian Olympic Committee has since taken control of sports organisations in some occupied Ukrainian regions.
Meanwhile “the Israeli and Palestinian Olympic Committees coexist peacefully”, according to the IOC’s Paris Games coordinating committee chair Pierre-Olivier Beckers.
Allowing some competitors from Russia and its ally Belarus to participate in Paris as individual neutral athletes is a major back down from the IOC’s original decision to totally ban the two countries.
IOC director James Macleod predicts 36 Russians and 22 Belarusian athletes will go to Paris, although the maximum numbers could be as high as 55 and 28.
The biggest names are likely to be tennis players including 2021 US Open champion Medvedev and fellow top 10 player Andrey Rublev as well as Belarusians Sabalenka and two-time Australian Open champion Victoria Azarenka.
“Tokyo was an extraordinary experience. It is one of the best memories of my sporting life, which I was surprised by because in our discipline we tend to think that the Slams are more important,” Medvedev said recently, echoing the sentiments expressed by many other top players at the Australian Open including the winner Jannik Sinner.
While Medvedev and Rublev have strongly opposed the war in Ukraine, the situation for Sabalenka might be slightly different as she has in the past declined to answer media questions about the war.
Either way the IOC will have to wave eligibility rules around tennis players participating in the Davis Cup or Billie Jean King Cup during the Olympic cycle because Russia and Belarus were suspended from those competitions.
Other sports likely to field neutral athletes from Russia and Belarus are gymnastics, judo, wrestling, cycling and swimming. They can only compete as individuals as no teams from those countries will be included.
But Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo has declared she doesn’t want any Russian athletes taking part in the Games.
“I would prefer them not to come,” she says. “It will be very, very difficult to see, even under the neutral flag, because we know how much emphasis (President Vladimir) Putin puts on Russians, these athletes.”
One sport at the Paris Olympics that will definitely not feature any athletes from Russia or Belarus is track and field, with the sport’s governing body World Athletics holding firm on its global ban.
Headed by Britain’s two-time 1500m Olympic champion Sebastian Coe, World Athletics has taken leading stands on groundbreaking issues including transgender athletes and payment for Olympic gold medallists, as well as bans on Russia and Belarus.
Regardless of how many neutral athletes make the cut for Paris, the numbers will be a far cry from the 330 Russian athletes and 104 from Belarus who took part in the Covid-delayed Tokyo Games held in July-August 2021.
And it is yet to be seen how the vocal and opinionated French crowds will react to the presence of athletes from these countries.
Russian and Belarusian athletes wanting to compete in Paris must first be approved by their sport’s international governing body and then meet a range of criteria through an IOC vetting process.
The criteria includes not actively supporting the war in the Ukraine; not displaying flags, emblems or having their national anthems played; not taking part in the Opening Ceremony; and signing a commitment to respect the Olympic charter.
The vetting process will be overseen by a review panel of three IOC members: vice-president Nicole Hoevertsz from Aruba in the Caribbean, Spain’s Pau Gasol who sits on the IOC Ethics Commission, and South Korean Ryu Seung-min from the IOC Athletes’ Commission.
Any medals won by neutral athletes won’t be displayed or counted on the Olympic medal table and a special anthem and flag will be used for them should they succeed and appear at a medal ceremony.
Neither Moscow nor Kyiv support the IOC’s ruling.
Ukraine initially threatened to boycott the Paris Games, but is now advising its athletes to go but avoid contact with any Russians or Belarusians, including not attending any joint media conferences.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova claimed the IOC was slipping “into racism and neo-Nazism”.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron accused Russia of running a disinformation campaign using fake social media accounts to undermine the planning and organisation of the Paris Olympics.
“Every day (Russia) is putting out stories saying that we are unable to do this or that, so (the Games) would be at risk,” Macron said.
For its part Russia is planning a sporting ambush by hosting its own international multi-sports event, the Friendship Games, in September 2024.
The Friendship Games will offer $100 million in prize money to invited athletes across 36 sports, and will be staged in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, 1500km east of the Russian capital.
The IOC has warned National Olympic Committees to treat the Friendship Games with caution. Russia last staged a Friendship Games in 1984 when it boycotted the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics.
Paris will be the fifth consecutive Games where Russia has faced sanctions, mostly due to its state-sponsored doping at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Russia has been stripped of six Olympic medals since Sochi.
One of the biggest Russian names to be shamed was bobsledder Alexander Zubkov, who carried Russia’s flag at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics opening ceremony. Zubkov was subsequently stripped of his two Sochi gold medals by the IOC in 2017 for doping and banned from the Olympics for life. As Russia’s Bobsleigh Federation president he was also banned from the sport for two years in 2019.
Michael Osborne has been a journalist for more than four decades including 35 years with the national news agency Australian Associated Press, rising from junior reporter to Editor.
He was AAP Editor for 11 years and served four years as Head of Sport and Racing. He was also posted to London and Beijing as AAP’s Bureau Chief and Foreign Correspondent.
He has worked at six Olympics and five Commonwealth Games, covered tennis grand slams, golf majors, international cricket, rugby world cups and numerous sporting world championships. He also co-ordinated and managed AAP’s teams and coverage at three Olympic Games in Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
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