Plans to allow Russian athletes to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics as neutrals could cause Ukraine’s neighbours to boycott the Games, a former leading IOC figure has warned.
The IOC announced last month that it will explore proposals to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes back into international competition, with qualifiers for Paris due to start soon.
Gerhard Heiberg, the Norwegian industrialist who served as an IOC member for 23 years including 13 as head of its marketing commission, said it was “far too early” to open the way to allow Russians to compete even as neutrals.
The IOC said it would explore an offer from the Olympic Council of Asia to “facilitate the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in competitions in Asia under its authority, while respecting the sanctions in place” — such as the flying of the two countries’ national flags or use of national colours.
“The plan to devise acceptable conditions for inclusion of Russian athletes is far too early,” Heiberg said. “Ukraine’s allies, indeed all of Europe, are wholly justified in their concern.
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“More information is needed on Putin and his military leaders [who are] still formidably aggressive. It is much too soon for leaders of the Olympic Council of Asia to be investigating possible loopholes for Russian integration.
“Neighbours of Ukraine may well resort to boycott. The West should lie low for the moment and not venture in this false direction. Putin is [so] obsessed with sporting triumph that Russia’s exclusion from Paris might force his hand in concluding [his] rampant terrorism.”
The IOC’s move has also set alarm bells ringing in France. Alain Luntzenfichter, the doyen Olympic commentator for the French sports daily L’Équipe, said: “It’s crazy, this plan would kill the Paris Games. Our ambition could instead become not the Olympic Games, but the War Games. The Olympics do not need Russia, not when we consider the horrors in Ukraine.”
Sir Craig Reedie, the former British IOC member, said that the commission’s president, Thomas Bach, “is well aware of my view on what is not a wise direction”.
The IOC’s move towards admitting Russian athletes took place at an “Olympic Summit” in Lausanne a month ago. It pointed out that many athletes from Russia and Belarus were already participating “in national leagues abroad and in different international sports competitions, including in cycling and tennis”.
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Russia’s Olympic president, Stanislav Pozdnyakov, was one of only three national Olympic committee chiefs invited to the summit in Lausanne despite him saying in September that Russia’s athletes should be honoured to fight in the war in Ukraine.
The invitation was branded “unacceptable” by Ukraine’s Olympic president, Vadym Guttsait, who said: “Russians cannot be allowed to use sports to legitimise military actions in Ukraine.”
