BORMIO — It is only 12 years ago that Russia were Winter Olympic hosts in Sochi. It might not be that long until they are again. All the signs point to them returning as competitors imminently.
We now know that the Sochi Games were at the heart of a state-sponsored doping and sample-swapping campaign, but Russia would have served their punishment for that by now, had they not been further sanctioned for the illegal invason of Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin’s last meaningful contribution at the Olympic Games was to fall asleep at the opening ceremony four years ago in Beijing.
It was a moment of drollery, in stark contrast to the real reason for his presence: he used those 2022 Winter Olympic Games to firm up his alliance with Xi Jinping and China, ahead of a planned short, sharp “special military operation” in Ukraine.
The Olympics is an inherently political event – whatever the IOC says (Photo: Getty)Yet four years later, his bloody, illegal invasion and occupation of Ukraine goes on. His flag was already banned from the Olympics over the institutional doping laid bare by the McLaren Report, but athletes who could prove they were clean could still compete under a neutral flag.
It is now significantly harder for his compatriots to compete at the Olympic Games, who must also prove they are neutral and not funded by or associated with the Russian state. It will not be that way for much longer. It has never been clearer that the ground is being prepared for Russia to return as an Olympic powerhouse.
The expulsion of Ukrainian athlete Vladylsav Heraskevych from the Games on Thursday was by no means the first sign of Russian appeasement, although it was perhaps the most egregious yet.
All Heraskevych wanted to do was commemorate some of his friends and colleagues who have been killed. Some were fighting to defend their country, others simply had bombs dropped on their homes by Russian drones. “Remembrance is not a violation,” his team-mate, luger Olena Smaha, wrote on her glove in training. In the eyes of the International Olympic Committee, it is.
www.instagram.com/p/DUprw38iAj2/?hl=enThe IOC’s leaders are probably also imagining the precedent they could set by allowing Heraskevych to carry the pictures on his helmet. What if, in four years’ time, a Russian skeleton rider crowns the country’s return to the Olympic family by trying to do the same with his own compatriots? So their excuse is that the Olympics is a place of neutrality, where sport, pure as the driven snow, can take place unfettered by politics.
Except that it isn’t. There is no more politicised global event than the Olympic Games. From the black power salute in Mexico City to the decades-long South African ban over apartheid, from Jesse Owens’s dominance of Hitler’s Games in 1936 to any number of boycotts across the the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
The Olympic Games is arguably more politics than it is sport, given every athlete bears a flag. And even the IOC accepts it is a political event, otherwise they would not have banned Russia and Belarus in the first place.
Marina Zueva is one of the Russians competing as a neutral athlete in Milan (Photo: Getty)And they will be back soon enough, given even current measures to restrict their presence are paper-thin. Of the 13 Russian athletes cleared by the IOC to compete as neutrals, an investigation by the BBC found at least four had shown support for war, the standard by which they were supposed to be judged by the vetting panel. The report also raised concerns about the neutrality of one member of that panel.
Daniil Gleikhengauz, the Russian skating coach, was even banned from Olympic qualifying by the International Skating Union (ISU) over his wife’s work for a Russian broadcaster/propagandist with strong links to Putin.
Yet, as The i Paper revealed this week, Gleikhengauz has been granted accreditation and will coach “neutral” Adeliia Petrosian, the Moscow-born and trained 18-year-old vying for gold.
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At this point, they might as well let Putin and his cronies back into the Olympic Games, as more Russians sneak through loopholes like Eteri Tutberidze, who has dual citizenship and dodged vetting by only declaring as a coach of the Georgian team. The Russians are here in all but name, which will make it easier to reinstate them when Olympic appeasement is finally ratified.
Of course while Russia remain excluded, they will continue to take the high road, albeit with a fairly transparent sideways glance. The Olympics have “lost their significance as a global competition for the best and strongest” according to Russian politician Vitaly Milonov last month, without a hint of irony.
But it does matter in Russia, and it always has. No doubt once Mother Russia is back, the Games will miraculously regain their status overnight.
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