MOSCOW, Jul 19 The Moscow Olympics, which kicked off exactly 43 years ago, teach everyone that political interference is taking a huge toll on the international sports system, said Head of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov.
The 1980 Olympics in Moscow were boycotted by a number of countries in Western Europe and North America, including the United States, thus protesting against the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan in 1979.
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"Looking back decades, the 1980 Moscow Olympics taught us that political interference is a global toll on the international sports system. Then hundreds of athletes from different countries could not fulfill the dream of a lifetime because of the political barriers that Western governments built for them. IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch, who was elected to this post at the IOC session in Moscow on the eve of the opening ceremony, understood this lesson very well and his entire period of work was aimed at ensuring that this never happens again,» Pozdnyakov wrote in his Telegram channel.
In February 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) called for Russian and Belarusian athletes to be excluded from international competitions because of the situation in Ukraine. In March of this year, the IOC executive committee recommended that international federations allow Russians who did not support the special operation to compete as neutral athletes. At the same time, the organization proposes to refuse the participation of athletes associated with the armed forces and security agencies, as well as teams in team disciplines. The Executive Committee of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) on May 25 expressed a unified position on the inadmissibility of Russian athletes signing any declarations of a political nature.