GENEVA (AP) — Facing a potential rival for the Olympics, which will be hosted by Russia, the IOC on Tuesday told sports and political leaders that the Friendship Games, scheduled to begin in the weeks after the Paris Summer Olympics, We asked them not to participate in the event.
The International Olympic Committee has condemned the intensive diplomatic move to promote the first Games in September as a “cynical attempt by the Russian Federation” to bring politics into sport.
“The IOC urges all stakeholders in the Olympic Movement and all governments to refuse to participate in or support any efforts to fully politicize international sport.” This was stated in a statement released at the meeting. IOC President Thomas Bach.
Late on Tuesday, the board decided to exclude all athletes from Russia and Belarus from participating in the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, even if they were granted neutral status to participate in the Olympics.
Russian President Vladimir Putin last year decreed that he would begin organizing summer and winter events under the Friendship Games banner with prizes worth tens of millions of dollars.
The tournament is aimed at countering the country's increasing isolation in international sports since the military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, as well as rising tensions with the IOC and Bach.
Four months ago, at the United Nations in New York, Russian diplomat Maria Zaborodskaya used the debate over the Olympic Truce in Paris to invite the world to a friendly and tout her country's support for “honest and fair competitions.” was cited.
The first matches are scheduled for September 15-29 in Moscow and Yekaterinburg, with prize money totaling 4.6 billion rubles ($50 million) in about 40 sports, according to Russian media reports.
The friendly matches are scheduled to begin five weeks after the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics on August 11th. The IOC does not award prize money to medalists.
Russia has been excluded from all team competitions at the Olympics, and competition officials have decided to give them neutral status, allowing individual athletes to compete without wearing the national symbols of the flag, national anthem, or red, white, and white uniforms. They must pass two stages of checks by the organization and the IOC. Blue.
The IOC announced on Tuesday that it estimates 36 athletes with Russian passports will be eligible to compete in Paris. Some of them may be blocked during the review process.
According to reports, one of the aims of the Friendship Games is to create an international competition for Russian players and teams whose careers have been stalled by the war in Ukraine.
It is unclear which countries have committed to sending teams to Russia in September or whether sports authorities are involved in the process.
IOC officials declined to say whether athletes who traveled to Russia to compete in friendly matches would be affected in any way.
The IOC warned that athletes could be “forced to participate by governments and thereby used as part of political propaganda campaigns.”
“To make their purely political motives even more obvious, they are deliberately circumventing the sporting bodies of the target countries,” the IOC said.
The IOC has announced that the Winter Friendship Games are planned for Sochi in 2026. The Black Sea resort hosted the 2014 Winter Olympics, when Russia and the IOC were closely allied, and Presidents Bach and Putin also expressed mutual admiration.
Ten years later, the IOC on Tuesday also called out the Russian government's “complete disregard for global anti-doping standards” and the integrity of the sport.
Despite evidence of state-sponsored doping and cover-up schemes, the IOC has decided not to expel Russia from subsequent Olympics, although Russian athletes have competed under the team name “Russia” since the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Summer Games. are not allowed to do so.
Within days of Russia's invasion of Ukraine during the Olympic Truce for the Beijing Winter Olympics, the IOC asked sports organizations to exclude Russia from participating in and hosting international sporting events.
As the Paris Olympics approached, Bach's stance softened, and he began suggesting that excluding all athletes from Russia and its military ally Belarus would be discriminatory.
