MOSCOW, July 28 President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov said that «a few units» from Russia will be able to go to the 2024 Games in Paris.
On March 28, the Executive Committee of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended that international federations allow Russians who did not support the special operation as neutral athletes to compete. 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 head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, invited 203 countries to participate in the Games, which will start exactly one year later, during a ceremony at the headquarters of the organizing committee of the 2024 Olympic Games in Saint-Denis on Wednesday. Russia and Belarus were not among them. The president of the organization did not name the exact timing of the decision on the admission of Russians and Belarusians.
“Recommendations and criteria initially almost completely ruled out the possibility for Russian athletes to even take part in the selection for the Olympics. In Paris, if they can eventually go, then a few, while it remains to be seen what new conditions and at what stage will be imperatively put forward «, Pozdnyakov wrote on his Telegram channel.
Thursday, the International Fencing Federation (FIE) expelled saber fencer Olga Harlan from the World Championships, which is taking place in Milan, due to the fact that the athlete did not shake hands with Russian Anna Smirnova. Later, the IOC called on sports federations to be more sensitive to Ukrainian athletes.
“Well, the statement in question indicates that the IOC has identified for itself and taken the side of the political conflict, began to act in the interests of this side, already openly distributing instructions to the participants in the Olympic movement: whose rights to protect, and whose — «postpone until the right moment.» Olympism is officially being made a tool controlled from the outside in the interests of a geopolitical order to neutralize our citizens and organizations in sports. Discrimination, double and triple standards, violation of not only legal, but now also moral and ethical foundations to advance the position of the customer! These are the new unwritten principles of international Olympic Movement? — said the head of the ROC.
«Or is it already through the looking glass, into which he was so diligently brought by the heirs of the noble ideas of Baron de Coubertin? This is a question of a much broader scale than purely sports, and its solution will already be in the plane of global humanitarian processes. Humanitarian. Human. And not opportunistic and ordered,» Pozdnyakov added.