MOSCOW – A decision regarding the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris will be taken no earlier than a year before the kick-off of the Games.
“A decision about the participation for athletes with a Russian or Belarusian passport will come a year before the Games,” Russia’s TASS news agency quoted the International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Thomas Bach as saying yesterday.
“As we have been indicating in our recommendations that we want to monitor, and now in the implementation of our recommendations, we all know that this is a complex issue,” Bach continued.
After Tokyo was home to the Olympic flame at the 2020 Summer Games, it will travel to Paris for the Summer Games in 2024 and then to Los Angeles in 2028.
In 2021, at the 138th IOC session in Tokyo, Australia’s Brisbane was selected to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games.
The IOC recommended on March 28 that international federations allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under a neutral status, while they would not be able to participate in team events. Another condition is that the athletes should not be supporters of the special military operation or be affiliated with the armed forces or national security agencies.
Russian Olympic Committee president Stanislav Pozdnyakov called these recommendations absolutely unacceptable as they would lead to a split in Russian sports.
On February 28, the IOC issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow’s special military operation in Ukraine as the reason.
On January 25, the IOC put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia to take part in international tournaments as neutrals, provided they did not actively support Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine. – Bernama, March 31, 2023
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