Only 15 Russian athletes will compete at the Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games under a neutral flag. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has published the final list of athletes who will take part in the event between July 26 and August 11, and dozens of Russians have refused to take part in the Games despite having been admitted. One of the organisers’ requirements is that the athletes do not publicly support the invasion of Ukraine.
Russian athletes will not take part in team tournaments, will not be allowed to wear national symbols and will not have their national anthem played at competitions. The IOC agreed in December 2023 to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to be part of the 4,600 athletes who will compete in the Olympic Games. However, it imposed a series of strict conditions that also included that they not be part of any military structure, a major impediment because many athletes have been part of clubs that have some kind of sponsorship or connection with the military or other security agencies, such as CSKA and Dynamo, since they were young.
This is the second Olympic Games in which Russia has been banned as a country. Its athletes went to Tokyo 2021 under a neutral flag, a year before the invasion of Ukraine, because the country had been sanctioned by the World Anti-Doping Agency due to the revelation of a government doping programme.
The IOC’s initial preliminary list included 11 Russian athletes. Out of 54 places awarded by the international body, 15 will be awarded: seven tennis players (Daniel Medvedev, Pavel Kotov, Roman Safiullin, Yekaterina Alexandrova, Mirra Andreyeva, Diana Shnider and Yelena Vesnina), three cyclists (Tamara Dronova, Alyona Ivanchenko and Gleb Syritsa), three canoeists (Zakhar Petrov, Alexei Korovashkov and Olesya Romasenko), one swimmer (Yevgeny Somov) and one trampoline gymnast (Anzhela Bladtseva). In addition, 16 athletes from Belarus, which served as a staging post for the offensive against Ukraine, will also compete under a neutral flag.
Another 21 Russian athletes who had been admitted have refused to participate in the Olympics. Among them a dozen wrestlers who, with the exception of Veronica Chumikova, initially accepted the invitation to Paris. The last to withdraw, the 2023 World Wrestling Championship bronze medallist Shamil Mamedov, claimed to have been injured in order to withdraw from the competition.
The decision by Mamedov, the only medallist of all those admitted, came a week after the Russian Wrestling Federation made a public appeal for none of its members to participate in the Games. According to the organisation, a “unanimous decision” was taken on 6 July not to go to Paris 2024, along with the invited athletes and the coaching staffs of the national freestyle, women’s and Greco-Roman wrestling teams.
The Kremlin has sought alternative formulas to the Olympic Games to convince its population that it is not isolated. One of the Russian government’s ideas was to organize a World Friendship Games in September in which excluded athletes would participate, although it has postponed the tournament to 2025. Another alternative was the BRICS Games in Kazan in June. However, the tournament passed without much fanfare among the Russians due to its low level. For example, the four-time world champion in synchronized swimming Alexander Maltsev won two golds. One in an artistic swimming event with no rivals and another in another competition in which only the Thai Kantinan Adisaisiributr participated.
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