A little over a month before the start of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games (JO) (from July 26 to August 11), the number of Russian and Belarusian athletes authorized to take part in the Olympic Games is becoming clearer. Saturday June 15, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) unveiled a first list of fourteen athletes Russians and eleven Belarusians who will participate – under a neutral banner – in the 2024 Olympics, in four disciplines: road cycling (4) – including the Russian Alexandr Vlasov, winner of the Tour de Romandie 2022 and fourth in the Giro in 2021 –, gymnastics/trampoline ( 3), weightlifting (2) and especially wrestling (16).
It is already certain that there will be no representative of the two banned countries in athletics. The president of the International Federation, Sebastian Coe, recalled in an interview with World that Russians and Belarusians were still not welcome on the circuit.
The athletes affected by the IOC’s decision on Saturday had to overcome the obstacle of Olympic qualifications, but also underwent a double check, by the international federations of the sports concerned and then by the IOC.
Russians and Belarusians were banned from world sport following the outbreak of war in Ukraine at the end of February 2022, before being reinstated on December 8, 2023 by the IOC, subject to satisfying a set of conditions. Only individual athletes (no teams) can thus participate under a neutral banner (without flag, anthem or colors of the country), as long as they have not actively supported the war in Ukraine or are linked to the military or national security agencies. The twenty-five names of “neutral individual athletes” (AIN) revealed on Saturday by the Lausanne-based body therefore meet these criteria.
“They must have the same rights as others”
On Friday, the International Swimming Federation, World Aquatics, for its part, granted neutrality status to a Russian swimmer, Yuliya Efimova, as well as to just under a dozen Belarusian swimmers. The breaststroker, six-time world champion and triple Olympic medalist at London 2012 (200m, bronze) and Rio 2016 (100m and 200m, silver), feared not having time to validate her qualification.
” They gave me [le statut neutre] today, but it’s a big problem that we don’t have enough time for the international qualifiers. The competitions all end on June 23: either they took place or they will take place next week”she declared on the microphone of the Russian channel Match TV.Ru, also emphasizing that she does not have a visa to go to Europe.
How many Russians and Belarusians will take part in the 2024 Olympics, the jersey bearing the acronym “AIN”, on an apple green background, according to the choice made by the IOC in March to award them a dedicated flag – just like a short musical composition without words , which will serve as their anthem in the event of an Olympic title? In March, the body was counting on 36 Russians and 22 Belarusians at the Paris Games, “according to the most likely scenario”and respectively 55 and 28 “to the maximum”. For comparison, during the Tokyo 2021 Olympics, there were 330 Russians, while Belarus qualified 104 athletes.
For its part, Ukraine is working hard to prevent any Russian athletes from taking part in the Paris Olympics, believing, through its Minister of Sports, Matvi Bidny, that these athletes are and will be “used by the immense propaganda machine” of the Kremlin. kyiv has not stopped for months to draw up the list of athletes who have ties to the military or support the war in Ukraine.
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Thus, the five Russian taekwondo players – including Maksim Khramtsov, patented support of Vladimir Putin – and Belarusians who had won an Olympic quota were not selected by the IOC, just as no selection for the Games was granted to Russian weightlifters.
On the other hand, the Russian wrestler Shamil Mamedovalthough singled out by kyiv for his membership in the Dynamo club, affiliated with the Russian national security services, appears in the list of sixteen fighters validated by the organization based in Lausanne.
“Not responsible for the actions of their government”
For months, the IOC has worked to mark the return, under strict conditions, of athletes from the two countries, banned since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 – in violation of the Olympic Charter.
“Athletes cannot be held responsible for the actions of their government. If they support these acts, they are punished. But if this is not the case, they must have the same rights as others”thus defended the president of the IOC, Thomas Bach, in March, in an interview with World. But, deprived of their official colors, the “AIN” will not be present during the opening ceremony on the Seine, and will not appear in the medal table.
There remains the question of a possible boycott of Russian and Belarusian athletes, a threat raised by Russia in recent months. On Friday, after Yuliya Efimova received neutrality status, the president of the Russian Swimming Federation, Vladimir Salnikov, told the official TASS agency that Russia was not standing in their way. “We have not prohibited athletes from applying for this status, it is their personal matter. »