MOSCOW, May 17. /TASS/. The Russian national men’s handball team will not participate in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, while the national women’s squad still has a chance of qualifying for next year’s Games, the press office of the International Handball Federation (IHF) announced in a statement to TASS on Wednesday.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations in late March against allowing athletes from Russia and Belarus to participate in international team sports competitions.

"About the opportunity to qualify. For the men there is no possibility anymore, [but] the women could qualify if they would be allowed to participate at the upcoming IHF Women`s World Championship and would qualify there," the statement reads.

The IHF added that it continued to adhere to the IOC’s recommendations, stating: "We still follow the recommendation from the IOC who decided to recommend only the comeback from individual Russian and Belarusian so far but not for team sports."

"We are in close contact with the IOC and our council will discuss the situation if anything changes," the IHF statement added.

After Tokyo’s turn hosting the Olympic flame at the 2020 Summer Games, it will travel next to Paris for the Summer Games in 2024, and then to Los Angeles in 2028. In 2021, at the 138th IOC session in Tokyo, Brisbane, Australia, was selected to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games.

At its session on January 25, 2023, the IOC Executive Board put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in international sports tournaments but only under certain conditions.

Specifically, athletes from the two countries should not be "actively supporting" Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status. Russia and Belarus were also banned from participating in international team events.

Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) President Stanislav Pozdnyakov called these recommendations absolutely unacceptable as they would lead to a split in Russian sports. Russian Presidential Spokesman Dmitry Peskov slammed the IOC’s recommendations as discriminatory.