The President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach estimated on Monday that politicizing sport “would be very harmful”, recalling to follow “closely” the countries which do not respect this principle, in a direct allusion to Russia.
Visiting Montevideo for the 100th anniversary of the Uruguayan Olympic Committee, Mr. Bach explained to the press that he was benefiting “at the moment from great support from the international community regarding the unifying power of sport. I hope that the next debate on the resolution of the Olympic truce, which will take place at the United Nations in November, will bring us a new surge of support,” he added, while the call to respect this truce, whose tradition dates back to the ancient Games, is launched before each edition of the Games.
Thomas Bach said the IOC was “closely” following attempts by certain countries to “politicize sport and replace sporting competitions like the Olympic Games, which are politically neutral games organized by civil society, with organized events. by the government”. This declaration comes after Russian President Vladimir Putin assured, last week, that “new organizational and legal forms” in the form of leagues, associations and clubs must come “undermine the current system” and thus replace the “ monopoly” represented, according to him, by the major structures of international sport such as the IOC.
“This is an announcement from Russia. We are following this closely, of course,” Bach said. “We are convinced that the world will realize that politicizing sport would be very harmful for society,” he said, recalling that the “mission of sport” was “to organize competitions between nations which, at at a certain moment, are politically friends. Vladimir Putin also accused the IOC of using the Games as “an instrument of political pressure”, and of carrying out “ethnic discrimination” due to limitations on the participation of Russian athletes in the Paris Games next year. Accusations “firmly” rejected by the international committee, which must still decide whether or not the Russians and Belarusians will be present in 2024. The latter were banned from all international competitions after the launch of the offensive in Ukraine in February 2022.
Since then, in March 2023, the IOC has recommended their reintegration into non-Olympic competitions, provided that they compete under a neutral banner, on an individual basis, and that they have not “actively supported the war in Ukraine”. In September, Russians and Belarusians were authorized by the International Paralympic Committee to participate in the Paralympic Games in Paris, under neutral banner and strict conditions of neutrality. Finally on October 12, the Russian National Olympic Committee (NOC) was suspended with “immediate effect” for having placed under its authority several organizations in occupied Ukrainian regions.
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