MOSCOW – Russian athletics stars are no strangers to being barred from international competitions, and the prospect of missing the 2024 Olympics over the invasion of Ukraine has piled onto years of frustration felt towards global sports bodies.
Since the International Olympic Committee (IOC) opened the door for Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals in Paris, calls to have them excluded have snowballed.
At an indoor track in Moscow on Friday, Sergey Shubenkov said he was avoiding reading the news about Russia’s Olympic prospects.
“As an athlete, I devoted all of my life to this sport and always did my job,” said the 2015 110m hurdles world champion and two-time Olympian.
“And I’m being told now, ‘You’re a good guy but we don’t need you’.”
A group of 35 countries, including the United States, Germany and Australia, will demand that Russian and Belarusian athletes are banned from the Paris Summer Games, the Lithuanian sports minister said on Friday, stepping up pressure on the IOC.
Ukraine and some of its allies have already threatened to boycott the 2024 edition if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete, while the IOC has left it to international federations to decide whether athletes from the two nations should be given a pathway to qualify.
“Much will depend on how World Athletics will behave,” Shubenkov added. “And there, of course, everything is not so rosy.”
Shubenkov was one of 10 Russians selected by World Athletics, track and field’s international governing body, to compete at the 2020 Tokyo Games without their flag or anthem. The measure was taken as part of wider sanctions against the Russian Athletics, which has been suspended since 2015 over doping offences.
When asked about the prospect of not being able to defend her Olympic title, high jumper Maria Lasitskene said: “It’s tough psychologically so I try to keep it together, train, compete and jump.”
Former sprinter Irina Privalova, a four-time Olympic medallist who now serves as deputy head of Russian Athletics, dismissed the suggestion that dissidents among Russian athletes could be allowed to compete as refugees.
“Athletes and any Russian citizen who does not support the President’s (Vladimir Putin’s) decision should not represent the country,” she told Reuters.
“I think those who don’t support (Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine) have already left. The ones who remain are those who support it.”
Some 18 months before the Olympics are due to start, it remains to be seen if Russian and Belarusian athletes could be given a chance to compete.
While Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo said Russian athletes should not take part, Paris 2024 organisers, who last week said they would abide by the IOC’s decision, declined to comment.
Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin said the calls from the 35 countries to ban Russian athletes were “unacceptable”. REUTERS
