The 2024 Olympics, set to kick off in Paris on Friday, will pit nation against nation amid a particularly fraught geopolitical landscape.
The Russia-Ukraine war, the Israel-Palestine conflict, as well as tensions between the U.S. and Iran, and a rocky relationship between the U.S. and China, have made the world stage a complicated place at present.
Nevertheless, athletes from countries around the globe will be expected to put international disputes aside and demonstrate good sporting behavior in Paris. And Russian and Ukrainian athletes will be participating, meaning they may well come face-to-face in some disciplines—even though, technically, Russia has been banned from the Games.
Athletes from Russia will be competing at the Olympics, but as “Individual Neutral Athletes” (AIN), after organizers banned the country from the Games following President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Consequently, the Russian flag has been banned from venues, Russian athletes will not be able to wear national kit and the country’s national anthem is forbidden. Russian athletes who win medals will not be included on the official Paris 2024 medal table.
The Eiffel Tower is decorated with the Olympic rings ahead of the Paris 2024 Games on July 22, 2024. Athletes from Russia will be competing at the Olympics, but as “Individual Neutral Athletes” after organizers…
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In addition, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) has also ruled that Russian athletes participating as individuals must not have actively supported the war and nor may they have any links to the Russian military. No Russian teams are allowed to compete and there will be no Russian track and field competitors because the sport’s governing body World Athletics has banned them. Athletes from Belarus, which supports Russia’s invasion, will be subject to the same sanctions.
The restrictions will dramatically shrink the participation of Russian competitors at the Games.
At the Tokyo 2020 Games there were 335 Russian athletes; at Paris, there will be just 15, according to the BBC. Some Russian athletes had accepted a place at the Games only for their sport’s governing bodies to reject their invitations, Olympic organizers said. Russia’s weightlifting federation said it blamed the “unsportsmanlike selection principle” for its decision to turn down invitations for 10 of its athletes, nine of whom had originally agreed to take part as individuals.
“If the IOC’s artificial conditions are designed to cut off the best Russian athletes and portray at the Olympics that Russian sport is dying, then you need to decide whether to go there at all,” Putin told his country’s sportsmen and sportswomen last year.
He accused the IOC of “ethnic discrimination,” a charge furiously denied by Olympic officials.
“Participation in the Olympic Games is by no means a human right,” they said, adding that the restrictions “are a reaction to the breach of the Olympic Charter by the Russian and Belarusian governments. We firmly reject the accusations being made that these measures constitute ‘ethnic discrimination.'”
Newsweek has reached out by email to representatives of the Ukrainian government seeking comment.