The position of Olympic sport number one was eagerly awaited. On Thursday, World Athletics president Sebastian Coe announced that Russians and Belarusians will remain "excluded" from international athletics competitions in the "near future" due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
On another front, the International Federation Council decided to reinstate the Russian Athletics Federation, which had been suspended following a vast doping scandal for more than seven years. This does not change anything regarding the immediate participation of Russian athletes in competitions.
The IOC has revived the debate
A year and a half before the Olympic Games in Paris, the debate is swelling on the reintegration of Russian and Belarusian athletes into world sport. After having "recommended" in February 2022 their exclusion from international competitions, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had shown at the beginning of the year its willingness to "explore ways" to bring Russian and Belarusian athletes back into the fold of world sport, possibly under a neutral banner, provided that they had "not actively supported the war in Ukraine".
World Athletics decided to establish a working group on the subject of the exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes due to the invasion of Ukraine.
- Sport
- Athletics
- Russia
- War in Ukraine
- IOC