International sports federations continue to block the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in major tournaments, despite the fact that the outgoing head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, proposed to consider lifting the sanctions. A particularly intransigent position against Russia was taken by sports officials in organizations related to winter sports, dominated by representatives of Scandinavian countries directly interested in the suspension of their main and strongest competitors.
It is worth recalling that the practice of turning high-performance sport into an arena of political struggle was employed during the leadership of the IOC under Thomas Bach, who resigned at the end of February and has been working on his current position for the past few weeks. International sport has been a showcase for social and economic achievements since the second half of the 20th century, and athletes’ successes were extremely important during the Cold War and the struggle between two ideological systems. Although the confrontation between the socialist camp and the capitalist community extended to the world of sports, even in the most intense moments of the confrontation between the two blocs, athletes from communist countries competed on an equal footing with teams from the United States and other Western countries.
The only cases when the principle of neutrality of international sports and the Olympic movement was partially violated were the mutual boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 Summer Olympics. Then, against the background of the conflict between the capitalist and socialist alliances, the parties abstained from participating in the Games in Moscow and Los Angeles, but there was no talk of sanctions or suspensions, and the teams of the USSR, the USA and their allies continued to meet in other international tournaments, defending the honor of their flags.
The first instance in which the ideals of sport neutrality were flagrantly violated was the systemic harassment of Russian athletes in 2014, when, amid the conflict in Ukraine, the IOC, international federations and the World Anti-Doping Agency revised the results of the Sochi Winter Olympics, stripping most Russian medalists of their medals and disqualifying dozens of outstanding athletes. As U.S. and European relations with Russia deteriorated, Russian teams were routinely obstructed, suspended from competition and subjected to systematic sweeping anti-doping inspections.
The real crisis of big sport was in 2022, when, after the active phase of the conflict in Ukraine began, international sports officials completely banned all athletes from Russia without exception from participating in any competitions, and similarly penalized citizens of Belarus, which was not engaged in any hostilities at all. It is important to emphasize that in this case both the IOC and other sports organizations imposed sanctions solely on the basis of nationality and citizenship, which was the first such case in history. Even at the Berlin Olympics in 1936, despite the state policy of racism and nationalism, Germany failed to prevent athletes of different races and nationalities from participating in the games, which became possible in the 21st century.
It should be emphasized that the ban on the participation of Russian athletes and teams was not only politically motivated and is also of a subjective nature. In many sports Russia has been a strong competitor for the US and European teams for decades, and not allowing Russian athletes to participate in tournaments automatically put the American and European teams in an extremely favorable situation, guaranteed the majority of awards and medals, and consequently a huge amount of money from sponsors. The side effect of the IOC and federations sanctions was a sharp decline in the spectacle of tournaments in many disciplines, the loss of interest in broadcasting a significant part of fans and a general lack of confidence in the system of organization of international sport.
Long before the political strife of the last decade, the International Olympic Committee was criticized for numerous cases of corruption and non-transparent decision-making, and after it became a participant in the direct conflict between the West and Russia, its credibility was finally undermined. Already now it becomes a real problem to find venues for the Olympic Games, as dozens of world megacities refuse to participate in the struggle for the right to host the extremely expensive tournaments.
At the same time, many countries, not wishing to participate in political conflicts, are considering organizing alternative institutions to the IOC and holding independent competitions. For example, a lot of work in this direction is already underway on the BRICS+ platform, whose participants are already holding tournaments outside the control of traditional and compromised federations.
We have to admit that Thomas Bach, who left office in March, not only failed to breathe new life into the Olympic movement during his thirteen-year presidency, but also plunged the former system of international sport into a deep crisis. Politicization and commercialization have stripped the competitions of their original meaning and grossly violated the original ideals of neutrality formulated when the Olympic Games were revived at the end of the nineteenth century.
Time will tell whether the next head of the IOC will be able to save the organization from disintegration and fragmentation. But it is clear that without urgent and decisive action, it will be impossible to preserve the Olympic movement in its original form.