Despite the restrictions imposed on its athletes due to the war led by Russia in Ukraine, Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin affirmed on Wednesday that his country should not boycott the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
Published on: 03/13/2024 – 1:25 p.m. Modified on: 03/13/2024 – 2:59 p.m.
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Russian athletes will be scrutinized, will not have the right to wear their colors but should still be present at the Paris Olympics: Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsine ruled out a boycott of the event on Wednesday March 13 during from a meeting covered by the state news agency Tass.
“We must not turn away, close ourselves off, boycott this movement,” declared the minister, referring to the Olympic Games next summer (July 26-August 11).
This statement dispels months of speculation about the Russian response to the drastic conditions imposed by the International Olympic Committee, at the beginning of December, for the participation of Russians and Belarusians in the summer high mass.
Not only does the IOC require athletes from both countries to compete under a neutral banner – a system forged during the 1992 Barcelona Olympics for Serbs and Montenegrins hit by international sanctions – but it adds a series of unprecedented criteria.
The athletes concerned will only be able to compete as individuals, prohibiting any demonstration of Russian sporting power during team events, and they must not have actively supported the Russian offensive in Ukraine – a point doubly verified by the federations international organizations then the IOC.
“Humiliating” treatment
Finally, they will have to have overcome the obstacle of qualifications, while certain international bodies only reinstated them very late in their competitions, and athletics maintains pure and simple exclusion.
Russia has continued to deem the treatment reserved for its athletes “humiliating” and “discriminatory”, and its President Vladimir Putin has been reserving his opinion on participation in the Paris Olympics for several months.
“To go or not? The conditions must be carefully analyzed,” he declared in December, when only eight Russians and three Belarusians met the IOC criteria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin during an interview with television host and general director of the Rossiya Segodnya news agency Dmitry Kiselyov at the Kremlin in Moscow on March 12, 2024 © Gavriil GRIGOROV / POOL/AFP
But while rumors about a Russian boycott agitated the sports movement all winter, Oleg Matytsin felt that it was necessary, “as much as possible, to preserve the possibility of dialogue and participation in competitions”.
The Minister of Sports, however, said he was waiting for the next meeting of the IOC Executive Board, from March 19 to 21.
“We will see what the final decision of the International Olympic Committee will be… but so far the position is that there will be no new recommendations and regulations,” he said.
The IOC has always presented its December decision as final, but must still decide on one point: the presence of Russians and Belarusians at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games, while the International Paralympic Committee prohibits them from parading during that of the Paralympic Games. on August 28.
Risk of bursting
Since the invasion of Ukraine by the Russian army with the support of Belarus, at the end of February 2022, the Lausanne body has been balancing between several considerations: sanctioning this resounding violation of the Olympic truce decreed around the 2022 Beijing Olympics , take into account the strong Western hostility to Russian athletes, but also preserve the participation of all athletes, without political considerations.
“With a heavy heart”, the IOC initially recommended the exclusion of Russians and Belarusians from international competitions to preserve their own security and avoid cascading boycotts, before orchestrating their gradual return from March 2023.
The organization is also keeping an eye on the competitions launched by Russia – Future Games, then BRICS Games in Kazan, “World Friendship Games” from September 15 to 29 in Moscow and Ekaterinburg – which threaten to fracture international sport.
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Even before its offensive against Ukraine, Russia had seen its participation in the Olympics limited due to a series of state doping scandals that have discredited a large number of Russian athletes and officials.
Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, delivers a speech during the opening ceremony of the Gangwon 2024 Winter Youth Olympic Games, in Gangwon, South Korea, on January 19, 2024 © Chloe KNOTT / OIS/ IOC/AFP/Archives
Despite overwhelming evidence, the Kremlin has denied any organized doping scheme and called the sanctions punitive anti-Russian measures.
