Ban May last to Paris 2024

LONDON • Athletes from Russia and Belarus may not be allowed to compete at the Paris 2024 Games over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, senior International Olympic Committee (IOC) member Craig Reedie has said.

The IOC issued guidance to sports governing bodies in February to remove the two countries' athletes from competition.

Belarus has been used as a staging ground for Russia's invasion, which Moscow calls a "special military operation" and is now nearing its fifth month of conflict.

With Russian President Vladimir Putin last week declaring that his armed forces were "just getting started", there are fears this will be a long, drawn-out war.

Even if there is some sort of ceasefire, Russia has shown no desire to withdraw from the contested Donbas region or the occupied areas around the Black Sea coast - a demand the West has set for any lifting of the sanctions.

Russian and Belarusian athletes and staff have already been barred by most Olympic bodies, although this excludes those under contract at football and ice hockey professional clubs, while in tennis, cycling and judo, they are allowed to operate under a neutral flag.

On whether the ban could be indefinite, former IOC vice-president Reedie told the British media yesterday: "A decision is going to have to be taken on what happens to each of these two countries and my guess is that the general feeling would be that they should not qualify.

"Most people are struggling with how we could achieve some degree of representation but, at the moment, there is no clear way to do it. Therefore, you maintain the status quo."

Athletes will miss qualification events for Paris as a result of the measures and IOC president Thomas Bach said in May that Russia's participation was unclear.

The body has, however, not sanctioned or banned Russian members who sit on the IOC from taking part in Olympic meetings and has also not sanctioned the Russian Olympic Committee.

Of the sports on the Olympic programme that have continued to allow Russians and Belarusians to continue to compete, Reedie said he doubted even athletes from those sports would be permitted to participate in qualifying events.

The Scot, a former president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, added it would be unrealistic to allow athletes to enter qualifying competitions once they have begun.

"It's quite difficult halfway through to say, 'All of you who have now qualified we've changed the rules'," he said.

"So there's a real issue for the federations, who have a clear instruction which they've agreed to that they won't invite Russians and Belarusians to take part in events.

"On the face of it, it's unlikely that anybody would qualify other than those three sports which don't do it that way. And will they be able to qualify (from those three sports)? I'm not sure."

A state-sponsored doping scandal following the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics has led to Russian athletes competing as neutrals at subsequent Games as part of IOC sanctions.

REUTERS