MOSCOW, November 14. /TASS/. Russia may have a chance to return to international competition once the International Olympic Committee (IOC) elects a new president, Shamil Tarpishchev, the president of the Russian Tennis Federation (RTF) said on Thursday.
"The issue of our athletes’ participation in all sports events requires separate consideration," he said speaking at a session of the State Duma’s Expert Council on Physical Culture and Sports. "This subject deserves its own report and we need to address this issue separately."
"There are options [of cooperation with international organizations]," he continued. "As you all may know, the IOC is set to hold elections next March, so we may see things take a turn for the better."
Seven candidates will vie for the IOC presidency at the organization’s 144th session in Greece between March 18 and 21.
The candidates set to run in next year’s election for the post of the world’s governing Olympic body are Sebastian Coe (Great Britain), Juan Antonio Samaranch (Spain), Morinari Watanabe (Japan), Kirsty Coventry (Zimbabwe), David Lappartient (France), Johan Eliasch (Great Britain) and Prince Faisal bin Hussein (Jordan).
Current President of the International Olympic Committee Thomas Bach announced his decision last August that he had no intentions of running for another presidential term in the world’s governing Olympic body.
Thomas Bach, who won an Olympic gold medal in fencing for Germany, was elected president of the IOC in 2013 at the 125th IOC session in Buenos Aires for a term of eight years.
Bach, 70, won his Olympic gold in the team foil competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics in Montreal. After serving his initial eight-year term as IOC president, he ran for another four-year term in the 2021 elections, where he was the sole candidate and was ultimately re-elected.
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 Paris Summer Olympics overall medal standings.
The IOC, however, ruled that Russian athletes, cleared to participate in the 2024 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.