There is no longer a place for Russian athletes in the Olympic family, a consequence of the Ukrainian conflict and the fight between the Kremlin and the Western world.
This is how the International Olympic Committee (IOC) interprets it, meeting as it is in Bombay, where it holds its annual congress.
The event is touching on a range of issues of important weight, and among them the election of the Olympic venue for the 2030 Winter Games (the Pyrenees-Barcelona candidacy no longer exists), the inclusion of five disciplines in Los Angeles 2028 or the future of athletic walking, a discipline in danger because it can no longer count on its longest test, the 50 km, hypothetically replaced by a mixed race whose distance is equivalent to the marathon.
Among all these topics, this Thursday, the debate has focused on the Kremlin: Olympism and Moscow have been at odds for years.
Both do not understand or accept each other, an issue that comes from afar, from the times of the Cold War boycott (Moscow '80 and Los Angeles '84), through the Soviet dissolution prior to Barcelona '92 (there, they paraded under the flag of the Unified Team) and, finally, the crisis of State doping, already on the eve of Rio 2016.
Since then, Russia has been a foreign body in the Olympic family, an organ that competes conditionally, always under the magnifying glass, and also under symbolic flags, not real ones.
In Tokyo 2020, Russia was not going to be a country in itself, but a federative body: its athletes paraded under the umbrella of the ROC (Russian Olympic Committee). Those who climbed to the podium were wrapped in the Olympic flag of the five rings. His anthem was never played, but rather Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1.
The war in Ukraine has further complicated the existence of Russian Olympics and its athletes. In its fight with Olympism, on October 5, the ROC announced that, unilaterally, it had decided to add to its delegation four territories that are under the Ukrainian umbrella: Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia.
Today, there is fighting in all these areas.
The IOC has not accepted the unilateral condition imposed by Moscow.
"The unilateral decision of the Russian Olympic Committee (to annex four areas that are internationally recognized as Ukrainian) opens a crack in the Olympic Charter because it violates the integrity of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee," the IOC statement said on Thursday.
The consequences?
Immediately, the IOC stops considering the ROC as a member of its family.
It withdraws its financial allocations and prohibits its athletes from participating in its competitions, even as neutrals, if they do not obtain a special permit. The Russians (and by extension, the Belarusians) have no space in Paris 2024 or in Milan-Cortina d'Ampezzo, site of the 2026 Winter Games.
On Telegram, the ROC has replied:
"The IOC has made another counterproductive decision with obvious political motivations," lamented the Russian body, adding that the decision hardly affects its athletes because, for the most part, "they are still unjustifiably excluded from international competitions, and their status as neutrals remains unchanged.
