• Ukraine has threatened to boycott the Games if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete — a stance which has been backed by several countries. Bach previously said the boycott threats were “extremely regrettable”.
• Speed climber Danyil Boldyrev, a two-time world champion and one of the favourites for an Olympic medal, said his partner Alina Logvynenko, who won bronze in the 4x400m relay at London 2012, had her house destroyed by a rocket.
Image: FILE
The International Olympic Committee is not on the wrong side of history following criticism over the potential inclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the 2024 Games, says Olympic chief Thomas Bach.
The International Olympic Council is “exploring a pathway” for athletes from the two nations to compete as neutrals. It has been widely criticised amid Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
“History will show who is doing more for peace,” Bach said.
The UK hosted a summit of 36 nations on Friday to discuss the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the next Olympics in Paris. However Bach, speaking at the World Ski Championships on Sunday, said allowing governments to decide who participates would “be the end of international sport competitions and Olympic Games as we know it”.
When asked if the organisation could be on the wrong side of history, Bach said: “No. We are trying to find a solution that is giving justice to the mission of sport, which is to unify, not to contribute to more confrontation.
“Every Ukrainian athlete can be rest assured that we are standing in full solidarity with them and that all their comments are taken very, very seriously into consideration. With every Ukrainian athlete, we can, from a human point of view, understand their reactions, we share their suffering.
“But with regard to participation of athletes we have to accomplish our peace mission and that is a unifying mission of bringing people together.”
Ukraine has threatened to boycott the Games if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete — a stance which has been backed by several countries. Bach previously said the boycott threats were “extremely regrettable”.
Russian sports minister Oleg Matytsin, speaking on Saturday, said calls to ban their athletes from the Olympics were unacceptable.
“Now we see an undisguised desire to destroy the unity of international sports and the international Olympic movement, to make sport a means of pressure to resolve political issues,” Matytsin told Russian news agency Tass. “Our mission is a peace mission,” Bach added. “History will show who is doing more for peace, the ones who try to keep lines open and communicate or the ones who want to isolate and divide.”
A number of Ukrainian athletes have spoken out against the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes at the next Games, including former Olympic and current world heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk and Elina Svitolina, who won tennis singles bronze at the 2020 Games.
Speed climber Danyil Boldyrev, a two-time world champion and one of the favourites for an Olympic medal, said his partner Alina Logvynenko, who won bronze in the 4x400m relay at London 2012, had her house destroyed by a rocket.
“We are not politicians, we are just sports people but we lose houses and friends,” Boldyrev, 30, told BBC 5 Live on Saturday. “The Olympics is important but more important is what’s going on in Ukraine.
“My mother gave me love and I always believe in love; I don’t want war anywhere in the world. But I don’t want to see Russian athletes in any competition when war is going on.”
In January, the IOC suggested Russian and Belarusian athletes could compete under neutral flags in Paris, saying “no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport”.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the IOC called on sports federations to exclude athletes, officials and teams from Russia and Belarus from international events.
The International Paralympic Committee banned Russia and Belarus from the Winter Paralympics in March 2022 - although athletes were allowed to compete under a neutral flag. However in December, IOC president Thomas Bach said the governing body faced a “big dilemma” in ensuring athletes do not suffer as a result of sporting sanctions.
On Thursday, the IOC urged Ukraine to drop threats of boycotting Paris 2024, with Bach telling the country’s Olympic Committee that such threats are “extremely regrettable”.
In a letter to Ukraine’s youth and sports minister Vadym Guttsait, Bach added that threatening a boycott is “premature” because the IOC has not discussed the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes as neutrals in “concrete terms yet”.
The move was criticised in a joint statement from two athletics groups — Athletes for Ukraine and Global Athlete — which said the decision shows the IOC “endorses Russia’s brutal war and invasion of Ukraine”.
Earlier this month, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland all voiced their opposition to the inclusion of athletes from Russia and Belarus.
The Olympic committees of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden then followed suit. Poland’s sport and tourism minister believes as many as 40 countries could boycott the next Olympics — thus making the whole event “pointless”.
The mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, does not want Russia to compete at the 2024 Olympic Games while the war in Ukraine continues, in a change to her previous stance.