“A boycott of the Games doesn’t lead anywhere.” Russia will not boycott the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, assured the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Stanislav Pozdniakov, during a press briefing on the sidelines of a congress of Russian Olympic athletes. The latter affirmed that each Russian athlete would be free to choose whether they wished to participate under a neutral banner or not.
Stanislav Pozdniakov recalled the case of the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow by Western countries, as a sign of protest against the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, launched in 1979. The “athletes were not able to participate in the competitions and the political boycott led to very negative results: neither side emerged as a winner,” he stressed, believing that “sport must distance itself from politics.”
Russian athletes were banned from competition after the launch of the Russian offensive in Ukraine in 2022. But the International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended last March the reintegration of Russian and Belarusian athletes into international competitions, under a neutral and “individually”, for those who did not actively support the offensive in Ukraine.
Few athletes expected
According to Mr. Pozdniakov, any Russian athlete will be able to participate in the Olympic Games under a neutral banner, if they wish to do so and if they are authorized to do so by the IOC. “We live in a free country. Each athlete is free to make their choice”, namely “to show solidarity with their teammates banned from the Olympic Games for invented reasons or to decide to participate under a neutral banner”, Mr. Pozdniakov further declared.
He stressed, however, that the “IOC recommendations” were “prohibitive in nature” and would “not allow a large number of Russian athletes to participate in the Olympic Games.” Russian athletes participated in the Tokyo 2021 Games under the banner of their Olympic committee, “ROC”, and not their country, a sanction following the revelation of a state doping policy in Russia, notably during the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics.
