MOSCOW, April 1. /TASS/. The leadership of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspends Russian athletes purely based on their nationality, which proves that the organization is playing politics, the chief of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) said on Monday.
"The authorities of the international Olympic Movement in recent years have become experts at arguing that black is white, shifting their own responsibility onto anyone else to cope with the set tasks," ROC President Stanislav Pozdnyakov stated on his Telegram account.
"For instance, such tasks as squeezing out everything related to Russia from the international sports landscape, which it [the IOC] usurped," he continued.
"It has finally been announced officially that Lausanne [home to the IOC headquarters] is a player on the political stage and sports is intertwined with politics. Another myth is busted," the ROC chief noted.
"However, there is a new fairy-tale afoot about Russia’s alleged boycott [of the 2024 Paris Olympics]," he said. "It emerged at a time when no one from our country was invited to the Olympics and they are still not invited as of today."
"Today’s Olympic boycott is about the IOC’s policy on banning athletes based on their national identity," the ROC chief stressed.
IOC’s regulations against Russia
The International Olympic Committee Executive Board convened for a meeting at the Olympic House in Lausanne, Switzerland, on March 19-20 and following the opening day it decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in the Parade of Athletes and also exclude them from the 2024 Olympics overall medal standings.
The IOC, however, ruled that Russian athletes, cleared to participate in the upcoming Olympics, would not have to sign anything denouncing their country’s special military operation in Ukraine.
On October 12, 2023, the IOC suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) until further notice after the Russian organization included the Olympic councils of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), the Zaporozhye and Kherson Regions as its members.
The Swiss-based CAS registered on November 6, 2023 an appeal from the ROC against the IOC’s decision on the Russian governing Olympic body’s suspension.
The suspension means that the ROC cannot act as a national Olympic committee or receive financing from the Olympic movement. The IOC however reserved the right to clear Russian athletes to take part in the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 as neutrals. Later, IOC President Thomas Bach said that Russian athletes should have no affiliation with the ROC if they want to compete at the Olympic Games.