Dhe basketball world governing body FIBA has excluded the men’s national team from Russia from qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. This emerges from a press release on Tuesday. “Following the recommendations of the IOC on the participation of athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports in international competitions, the FIBA Executive Committee has decided not to allow the registration of the Russian men’s national team for the FIBA 2023 Olympic Prequalification Tournaments,” it said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently recommended only allowing Russian and Belarusian individual athletes as neutral starters, provided they do not support the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine.
In men’s basketball, twelve teams qualify for Paris, seven of them via the World Cup in Japan, Indonesia and the Philippines (August 25 to September 10). Germany is there too. The four remaining Olympic starters in addition to host France result from qualifying tournaments. From 40 teams that could not qualify for the World Cup, five participants for the final qualification competitions in the coming year will be determined in pre-qualification tournaments from August 12th to 20th.
Russia and Belarus were excluded from qualifying for the World Cup, although it would not have been enough for the Belarusians to participate in the pre-qualification based on the sporting ranking alone. Meanwhile, the Russians were replaced by Bulgaria.
For women, the European Championships in Israel and Slovenia (June 15-25) are the most important qualifying competitions on the continent, from which Russia and Belarus are also banned.
