The tone goes up a notch between Russia and the supporters of an exclusion of its athletes, even if they would be under a neutral banner, at the 2024 Olympics. Russia indeed denounced on Saturday the call to ban Russian athletes of the Paris Olympic Games, the day after a meeting where Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for such a measure, in the midst of an armed conflict with Moscow.
“The attempt to dictate the conditions for the participation of athletes in international competitions is absolutely unacceptable (…) We are currently seeing an undisguised desire to destroy the unity of international sport”, declared the Russian Minister of Sports , Oleg Matytsin, quoted by Russian news agencies. On Friday, Mr. Zelensky said that the presence of Russian athletes at the Paris Games would be “a sign of violence and impunity”, trying during a meeting to convince sports ministers from several countries.
The IOC leans on the side of the Russian athletes
Those calling for exclusion “would do better to take care of sport in their own countries and do everything so that sport is an ambassador of peace and helps to build bridges between peoples”, commented Saturday Mr. Matytsin. He assured that “no one” had called for the exclusion of American athletes from the 2004 Olympics, after Washington’s invasion of Iraq.
Ukraine is against the possibility of a presence of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the 2024 Olympics in Paris, including under a neutral banner, envisaged by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) without anything having been decided yet. in this sense. She threatened to boycott the competition. The President of the IOC, Thomas Bach, denounced in a letter dated January 31 this Ukrainian intransigence, which according to him goes “against the fundamentals of the Olympic movement”.