PARIS, August 8. /TASS/. Russian athletes Alexey Korovashkov and Zakhar Petrov finished 4th on Thursday in the men’s canoe double 500-meter sprint event at the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in the French capital of Paris.

The duo of Russian athletes, who participate under a neutral status at the 2024 Olympics, completed the distance in 1 minute 41.27 seconds.

China’s Liu Hao and Ji Bowen won the Olympic gold with the result of 1 minute 39.48 seconds, the Italian duo of Gabriele Casadei and Carlo Tacchini raced to take the silver (1 minute 41.08 seconds) and Spain’s Joan Antoni Moreno and Diego Dominguez clocked the distance in 1 minute 41.18 seconds to clinch the bronze.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) allowed a team of 15 Russian athletes to participate in the 2024 Summer Olympics as neutrals.

The Russian team’s lineup includes tennis players Daniil Medvedev, Pavel Kotov, Roman Safiullin, Yekaterina Alexandrova, Mirra Andreeva, Diana Shnider, Yelena Vesnina; canoeists Zakhar Petrov, Alexey Korovashkov, Olesya Romasenko; swimmer Yevgeny Somov; cyclists Tamara Dronova, Alyona Ivanchenko, Gleb Syritsa; and Anzhela Bladtseva, who competes in trampoline event.

IOC’s regulations against Russia

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) 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.