(Sports news) With Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia and Ukraine already rejecting International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) plan to allow Russians and Belarusians to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics, Poland’s sport and tourism minister Kamil Bortniczuk has claimed that up to 40 countries could join the existing five, thereby making the event pointless. The IOC has defended their inclusion plan by saying that any boycott will only “punish athletes”, many of whom work for decades to compete in the biggest sporting event in the world.
According to Bortniczuk, there can be a possible coalition of 40 countries led by Great Britain, United States and Canada, which could be formed as early as before the IOC’s meeting on February 10th. He said “Considering this I don’t think we will face tough decisions before the Olympics and, if we were to boycott the Games, the coalition we will be a part of will be broad enough to make holding the Games pointless.”
Last week, the IOC announced that it was “exploring a pathway” to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics to compete under a neutral flag, saying that “no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport”. The announcement was met with criticism from the UK Government who said that their plan was a “world away from the reality of war”. Ukraine’s sports minister Vadym Guttsait said that sporting bodies from around the world needed to “strengthen communication” to ensure the ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes was kept in place.
Sports ministers from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and Poland said “any effort by the International Olympic Committee to bring back Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, even under a neutral flag, should be rejected. Efforts to return Russian and Belarusian athletes to international sports competitions under the veil of neutrality legitimize political decisions and widespread propaganda of these countries.” They also asked “all international sports organisations and federations” to remove Russian and Belarusians athletes from international competitions until the war ends.
The United States government has supported the ban on Russian and Belarusian sport governing bodies and have also encouraged organisations to stop the broadcast of sporting events in both the countries. The White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete, it should only be as neutral athletes and “it should be absolutely clear that they are not representing the Russian or Belarusian states”.
“Threatening a boycott of the Olympic Games, which the NOC of Ukraine is currently considering, goes against the fundamentals of the Olympic movement and the principles it stands for,” the IOC wrote in a question-and-answer document published on Thursday. “A boycott is a violation of the Olympic charter, which obliges all NOCs to ‘participate in the Games of the Olympiad by sending athletes’. As history has shown, previous boycotts did not achieve their political ends and served only to punish the athletes of the boycotting NOCs.”
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