Many of us, sports fans, have heard since we were children that “we should not mix sports with politics”. Beyond the romantic side involved in the phrase, it is difficult to question the idea that, in the end, it is only a voluntary statement that is little reflected in reality.
It is not even necessary to establish, by definition, that it is a toxic link. Of course, in modern history, there have been many episodes that were. Mussolini talking about winning or dying at the Italian soccer team on the way to the 1934 World Cup, Adolf Hitler’s unspeakable pretensions to sustain his supremacist delirium at the hands of German athletes at the 1936 Berlin Games, the infamous bloodbath between Hungarian and Soviet water polo players in Melbourne 1956 -Freedom’s Fury according to the cinematographic interpretation of Quentin Tarantino- or the obsession of the Argentine dictatorship in pursuit of selling abroad a false image of peace and harmony through the 1978 World Cup are just a few examples in this regard.
However, there are also many signs that the link between politics, or governments, or States and sport is not only inevitable but, on many occasions, it becomes a decisive tool for the development of high performance. It happens in the most modest countries; also in the big powers that, through subsidies for local federations or large investments to guarantee infrastructure in line with the requirements of mega-events, become an indivisible part of the growth, development and evolution of our stadium idols.
The news of the last few hours says that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced that it will not send the corresponding invitations to participate in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games to the National Olympic Committees of Russia and Belarus on July 26.
The invitation is a protocol event that takes place one year before the start of each of the Olympic Games and the IOC said that it will take “in due course” the decision on the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in Paris 2024.
“The current recommendations of the IOC for international federations and the organizers of international sports competitions on the participation of athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports do not refer to the participation of these athletes and their support staff in the Olympic Games in Paris 2024 or in the Olympic Winter Games in Milan Cortina 2026,” said the organization chaired by the German Thomas Bach.
In addition, in updating the status of Russian and Belarusian athletes and on their possible participation in the Olympic Games, the IOC assured that “it will take this decision in due course, at its sole discretion, and without being conditioned by the results of the Olympic qualification competitions”.
Russia’s response to the International Olympic Committee decision
Dmitri Chernishenko, Russian Deputy Prime Minister, made statements after learning of the decision of the International Olympic Committee not to send invitations to Russia and Belarus to participate in the Paris 2024 Games.
“If for that we have to renounce the homeland and betray it, it’s not in our interest,” Chernishenko said, stating that Russia “always waits to receive an invitation, we are happy when our athletes are allowed to compete.”
The Deputy Prime Minister reiterated that they do not agree with the obligation that athletes have to compete in a “neutral” manner and defined the situation as “the humiliations that the Anglo-Saxons invent”. In addition, he said that they have all the necessary documentation to appeal IOC decisions to the courts.
Russian and Belarusian athletes were suspended in February last year from all international competitions after the invasion of Ukraine. The IOC, in its latest recommendations, asked the different federations to be able to compete in a “neutral” way and “not discriminate against athletes by passport”. However, it has not yet been decided what will happen at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Guatemala will not receive the IOC invitation for Paris 2024 either
In the recent Central American and Caribbean Games that took place in El Salvador, Guatemalan athletes also had to participate under the condition of “neutrals” because the Guatemalan Olympic Committee (COG) is suspended.
The measure, which occurred in October 2022 after the partial suspension of the COG statutes by the Constitutional Court following a lawsuit filed by a candidate for the presidency of the organization, was ratified on June 21. Political interference violates the rules imposed by the International Olympic Committee.
In this way, the IOC announced that Guatemala, as well as Russia and Belarus, will not receive the invitation to participate in the Paris 2024 Olympic Games on July 26.
Certainly, the Guatemalan case deserves much less discussion than that of the Russians and Belorussians, for the simple reason that the sanctions against the conflicting committees are as old as the rules of modern Olympism.
Regarding the other episode, definitely more voluminous and sadder, we must insist as many times as necessary that in these cases there is no decision that satisfies everyone, as unfair as the war itself.
And it is not only if we think of the confrontation between athletes who represent an aggressor nation and those who do so in the name of the attacked territory. If the case, as I imagine it will be, that the IOC allows the presence of athletes of both nationalities without flags or national anthems, there will also have been an injustice within the same delegations that will be able to send athletes in individual events but not in those by teams.
Of course, nothing matters more than to fervently hope that the conflict will end. In the meantime, we are still betting that sport will give a message of harmony. Once again.
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