One year after the invasion of Ukraine began, Russia’s reintegration into the world of sports threatens to create the biggest rift in the Olympic movement since the Cold War.
Russia remains excluded from many international sporting
events, but that could soon change. Next year’s Paris Olympics are fast
approaching and qualifying events are under way. The International Olympic
Committee is working to bring athletes from Russia and ally Belarus back into
competition, but not everyone agrees.
If Russian athletes are to return to competition, the sports
world must resolve two key issues that became clear in the days after the
invasion: How can Russian athletes return without alienating Ukrainians? And
what can be done about the Russians who support the war?
As the first battles raged, the Ukrainian fencing team
refused to compete against Russia at a tournament in Egypt, holding up a sign
reading: “Stop Russia! Stop the war! Save Ukraine! Save Europe!”
A year later, one of the biggest obstacles to a Russian
return to sports is Ukraine’s insistence it could boycott rather than risk
handing its enemy a propaganda success or further traumatizing Ukrainian
athletes affected by the war. Other European countries have also spoken of
boycotting the Olympics if Russians are allowed to participate.
The last major Olympic boycotts came four decades ago when
the United States and more than 60 allies skipped the 1980 Moscow Games. The
Soviet Union and its allies retaliated by boycotting the 1984 Los Angeles
Olympics.
The actions of specific athletes are a separate issue.
Russian gymnast Ivan Kuliak taped a “Z” symbol to his chest, mimicking a
marking used on the country’s military vehicles, while standing on the podium
next to the Ukrainian winner at an event in Qatar last March. He was banned for
a year.
The IOC now says it will not support the return of any
Russian athlete who has “acted against the peace mission of the IOC by actively
supporting the war in Ukraine,” but hasn’t defined what that means in practice.
Sports organizations took swift action last year in response
to the Russian invasion. A day after tanks rolled into Ukraine, Russia was
stripped of the right to host the Champions League final in men’s soccer and
the Russian Grand Prix in Formula One. After four days, the IOC recommended excluding
Russian and Belarusian athletes from events “to protect the integrity of global
sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
The Russian men’s national soccer team was in the World Cup
playoffs at the time, hoping to qualify for last year’s tournament in Qatar,
but Poland refused to play them. Russia was then excluded from the competition
— four years after hosting the 2018 tournament and reaching the quarterfinals.
As the Paris Olympics come into view, the IOC has shifted
its emphasis to what it says is its duty to avoid discriminating against anyone
based on nationality, and to create a path for Russians and Belarusians to
compete as neutral athletes without national symbols. Safety concerns might be
avoided, the IOC says, if Russia and Belarus were to compete in events in Asia,
including Olympic qualifiers at the Asian Games in China.
The IOC points to tennis, where the men’s and women’s
professional tours have allowed individual Russians and Belarusians to compete
without national symbols. Belarusian player Aryna Sabalenka won the Australian
Open last month. Even in tennis, though, Russia and Belarus are excluded from
national team competitions like the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup, and
they were also barred from playing in last year’s Wimbledon tournament.
Russia and its athletes have been at risk of being banned at
each Olympics since the steroid-tainted 2014 Sochi Winter Games. Previously, it
was because of Russian state-backed doping and then the country’s attempt to cover
up evidence of that scandal.
Ukraine is fiercely opposed to allowing Russians back into
world sports, and especially next year’s Olympics. Ukraine says more than 220
of its athletes have been killed in the war, and hundreds of sports facilities
lie in ruins. It points to precedents like the exclusion of Germany and Japan
from the 1948 Olympics following World War II.
“If, God forbid, the Olympic principles are destroyed and
Russian athletes are allowed to participate in any competitions or the Olympic
Games, it’s just a matter of time before the terrorist state forces them to
play along with the war propaganda,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy
told a summit of sports ministers and officials from more than 30 countries
this month.
That summit produced a joint declaration full of skepticism
for how the IOC’s proposed neutral process could work, with particular concern
about whether the many Russian athletes with ties to the military could
compete. The IOC said Tuesday it found those questions “constructive” but that
the nations did not address its concerns about possible discrimination.
The clock is ticking for the IOC to find a solution for
Russian and Belarusian athletes to have the opportunity to qualify for the
Olympics. Qualifying has already begun in many sports and will start soon in
others.
While Russians have been largely excluded over the last
year, Ukraine’s athletes have had some notable successes on the world stage.
Oleksandr Usyk, who took up arms in defense of Ukraine shortly after the
invasion, returned to boxing and defended his heavyweight title against Anthony
Joshua in August. High jumper Yaroslava Mahuchikh won a world championship
silver medal in Oregon and Maryna Bekh-Romanchuk won the European triple jump
title.
The Ukrainain men’s soccer league resumed in August — with
some games interrupted by air-raid warnings — and Shakhtar Donetsk held its own
in the group stage of the Champions League with a win over German club Leipzig
and a draw against Spanish powerhouse Real Madrid.
In a statement Wednesday marking the one-year anniversary of
the invasion, the IOC didn’t mention its efforts to reintegrate Russia and
Belarus, but said the Olympics could promote “peaceful competition” between
athletes from the likes of North and South Korea, or Israel and Palestine.
“Peace-building efforts need dialogue,” the IOC said. “A
competition with athletes who respect the Olympic Charter can serve as a
catalyst for dialogue, which is always a first step to achieving peace.” -AP
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