If there were any doubts that the 13th Winter Games for people with disabilities would take place under the impression of war, then they were null and void with the first question in Beijing’s Main Press Centre. The press conferences for the Paralympics, which are scheduled to begin on Friday, are also taking place where the organizers of the Olympics tried to separate political issues from sporting issues last month.
Well, Wednesday evening Chinese time, a man stood at the microphone wearing a jacket in the national colors of Ukraine. He introduced himself, his voice shaking slightly, as Lee Reany, journalist of the Kyiv Post, the English-language newspaper in Kyiv. He said he was the only journalist who was able to travel to China from Ukraine. He was holding a picture of fallen biathlete Yevhen Malyshev. And then he asked Andrew Parsons, President of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC), how Malyshev’s family would explain the IPC’s decision to “allow athletes from the aggressor’s state to compete.”
Parsons, 45, extended his condolences at length. The war in Ukraine was “disgusting” and “against humanity”. But: “We have to follow the rules of our association.”
Similar to the Olympics, it can be assumed that Russia’s successes will shape the competitions at the Paralympics
Shortly before that, the IPC had announced its decision: Athletes from Russia and Belarus are allowed to take part in the Paralympics as “neutral athletes”, despite the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Although various world sport associations had excluded Russia since the beginning of the week. Although even the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended the exclusion.
The IOC, which has a cooperation agreement with the IPC, had previously left a loophole open to its partner committee. If world associations are not able to exclude athletes from Russia and Belarus for “time or legal reasons”, they should at least compete under a neutral flag. Parsons then also referred to legal reasons: “What we have chosen is the harshest punishment that we can impose within the framework of our constitution and the current IPC rules,” he said. An exclusion, he said, would be lifted again by German courts – the seat of the IPC is Bonn.
A Kyiv Post journalist holds up a picture of biathlete Yevhen Malyshev, who was killed in the war, at the press conference.
(Photo: Sergei Savostyanov/ITAR-TASS/Imago)
Now Russian successes shouldn’t be listed in the medal table, the anthem shouldn’t be played, the flags shouldn’t be hoisted. But these penalties would have already applied after the state doping scandal in 2014, just as it was at the Olympics. And similar to the Olympics, it can be assumed that Russia’s successes will shape the competitions at the Paralympics.
The team consists of 71 players, especially in the Nordic disciplines Russia is dominant. At the World Championships in Lillehammer earlier this year, Russian athletes stood on the podium in almost every competition. The team won 54 medals, 19 of which were gold. Cross-country skier and biathlete Vladislav Lekomtsev won seven titles out of a possible seven.
Lekomtsev, 27, who is missing his left arm, runs like in his own class with impressive athleticism. But Lekomtsev also shows how difficult it is to separate sport and politics: According to his biographical information on the IPC website, he is an ambassador for the Russian GTO sports badge – a relic from the Soviet era that was reintroduced under Vladimir Putin.
“I now expect all participants to treat the neutral athletes like any other athlete at these Games, no matter how difficult that may be,” said IPC President Parsons. “Unlike their respective governments, these Paralympic athletes and officials are not the aggressors. They are here to participate in a sporting event like everyone else.”
Karl Quade, Germany’s chef de mission, says he is ‘deeply ashamed’
IOC President Thomas Bach spoke up in the evening with support for the IPC. “This decision is in line with the overarching recommendations,” he said. But the voices of the outspoken critics were in the majority.
“That is disappointing and despondent. In view of the daily atrocities of war in Ukraine, we would not have thought such a decision possible,” said Friedhelm Julius Beucher, President of the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS). He spoke of a “completely wrong signal”. Karl Quade, Germany’s chef de mission, said he was “deeply ashamed”. DOSB President Thomas Weikert also supported the arguments of the DBS.
A second look at the results of the World Championships of Paralympic Winter Sports in Lillehammer in January shows how much the war is likely to be present at the competitions in Beijing. The second best team, with 21 medals: Ukraine.
20 athletes and nine guides for the visually impaired starters, that’s the size of the Ukrainian team that landed in Beijing on Wednesday. Parsons lavishly praised the athletes, calling it “a fantastic story of human resilience” for Ukraine to compete in China. But one could imagine how cynical such sentences must have seemed to the athletes.
Even Parsons admitted that the head of the Ukraine committee, Valery Suskevich, in conversation with him, demanded that Russian athletes should not be allowed to compete. And a statement from the team sounded correspondingly outraged. “While Russian and Belarusian bombs are raining down on citizens of Ukraine, the International Paralympic Committee today dealt another blow to every Ukrainian athlete,” said a joint statement by the “Athletes of Ukraine” and the “Global Athlete” alliance.
Andrew Parsons, chairman of the IPC, tries to explain the decision at a press conference.
(Photo: Sergei Savostyanov/ITAR-TASS/Imago)
The association apparently came to this conclusion before the outbreak of the war that encounters between Paralympic athletes from Russia and Ukraine outside of competitions should be avoided. At the beginning of last week, the German association said it was asked whether they wanted to move within the Paralympic village: the houses of the Russian and Ukrainian committees were originally planned to be in the immediate vicinity.
The Germans agreed to swap houses with Ukraine. So your neighbors are now the Russians. A team that association president Beucher said he could not and would not imagine moving into the stadium at the opening ceremony on Friday. A team whose relationship with the Paralympics in international sport has played a special role.
The 14-strong IPC executive decided that the war should only be discussed again after the games
In 2014, the Sochi games were being played while Russia annexed Crimea. At the time, Vladimir Putin thanked “that the Paralympic Games stayed outside of politics and the complicated circumstances that – as you all know very well – had no influence on the Games”. Of course, that wasn’t the case back then.
Two years later, unlike at the Olympics, no Russian athletes competed at the Paralympics in Rio because of the state doping scandal. But what some saw as a salvation of the sport soon changed again. In 2018 in Pyeongchang, Russian athletes took part again.
Under Parsons, President since 2017, the IPC has converged again with the IOC. And what Parsons said in a recent interview with Deutsche Welle about the opinions expressed by athletes in China did not sound too dissimilar to his colleague Bach: “The disabled athletes are here to inspire the world. They can also do positive things say about peace and inclusion.”
The 14-strong IPC executive decided that the war should only be discussed again after the games. Only then should the 206 member organizations decide whether violations of the “Olympic Armistice” can lead to exclusion in the future.
He personally supports it, Parsons said. But it’s too late for the Paralympics in Beijing. The German neighbors reported that cheers erupted in the Russian house on Wednesday.