World Athletics upholds ban on Russian athletes ahead of Paris Olympics
World Athletics said Thursday that athletes from Russia and Belarus would remain banned from competing, including qualifying for next year’s Paris Olympics, as part of sanctions over the war in Ukraine.
The move sets the stage for a high-profile showdown between one of sport’s biggest federations and the International Olympic Committee.
The Sports Authority, which administers competition rules and world championships for athletics, marathons and walkers, said athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus will be banned from all such events “for the foreseeable future” and a working group will be set up to assess conditions for their possible resumption at a later date determine.
The policy puts World Athletics at the forefront of a divide in the sports world over the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in global events. It also contradicts statements by IOC President Thomas Bach, who advocated neutral participation by athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports.
“The death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the deaths of approximately 185 athletes, has only increased my resolve on this matter,” said Sebastian Coe, President of World Athletics.
The policy is the result of some bureaucratic manoeuvres, as World Athletics originally announced it would ban Russians and Belarusians in March 2022.
At the time, Russian athletes were still under a 2015 ban on the country’s state-sponsored doping program, a sanction that the World Athletics Council lifted on Thursday, paving the way for a reconfirmation of the ban over the Ukraine war.
Many sports are in the qualifying phase for next summer’s Olympic Games in Paris, with athletes seeking participation in the Games based on international rankings, world championship results, or other criteria set by their sports federations.
The IOC, which administers the Games but largely does not set qualifying criteria for sports, has urged federations to allow “neutral” athletes to be admitted, in part to forestall potential boycotts.
Speaking to a policy forum in his native Germany on Wednesday, Bach said: “When politics decides who can compete, then sport and athletes become tools of politics. It is then impossible for sport to transfer its connecting forces.”
Some sports federations, including the International Fencing Federation, have voted in recent weeks to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to resume competing, sparking an outcry from Ukrainian fencers and their allies.
Last month, nearly three dozen nations, including Britain, the United States, Germany and Canada, wrote a letter to the IOC stating: “Russia and Belarus have it in their own hands to pave the way for the full return of their athletes to the IOC to pave international sport community, namely by ending the war they started”.