Athletes from both countries have faced sanctions in multiple sports but may be allowed to compete at the Paris 2024 Games under a neutral flag.
IOC UPDATES -Athletes from Belarus and Russia should be allowed to compete in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris under a neutral flag, according to representatives of national Olympic committees and international sports federations, “as soon as possible.”
Athletes’ chances of competing as neutrals at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Paris have improved following a Tuesday endorsement at the Olympic Summit in Lausanne.
According to a statement released following the meeting, athlete representatives also requested “clarity” on the matter during the summit.
The question of whether athletes from Russia and Belarus—a significant ally of Moscow in its attack against Ukraine—will be allowed to compete in the summer Olympics remains before the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Olympic qualifying is underway, therefore the IOC indicated that worldwide Olympic summer sports federations, continental organizations of national Olympic committees, and the IOC Athletes’ Commission supported this choice and now urge a prompt final decision.
The IOC has reiterated that a decision will be made “at the appropriate time,” nevertheless.
Since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, athletes from the two nations have been subject to restrictions from a wide range of sporting events.
Over the past year, though, a number of Olympic sports have seen rules loosened, enabling them to resume competition under specific circumstances.
For AINs holding a Russian or Belarusian passport, neither the qualification system established by the respective International Federations nor the number of allocated quota places to a sport will be changed.
IOC Statement
On October 12, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) for recognizing illegally acquired areas, a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Regional organizations from four areas of Ukraine that Russia has occupied since the invasion started in 2022 have been recognized by the ROC.
The Russian Olympic Committee filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) last month in opposition to the IOC’s suspension of it.
After rejecting an outright ban, organizers decided in September to permit competitors from Belarus and Russia to compete at the Paralympics the next year under a neutral flag.
New IOC-OECD standards will provide useful tools to assist sports organizers of the Games in producing successful events.
In the framework of organizing significant sporting events, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are maintaining their collaboration. They have released new guidelines to assist large-scale international event organizing committees in managing the complexities involved in hosting these kinds of projects and reducing associated risks. They adhere to the most recent papers that quantify the long-term effects of world events.
Selected aspects of particular challenges for the organizing committees are covered in the “Guidelines on the Effective Delivery of Infrastructure and Associated Services in the Context of the Olympic Games.” These include stakeholder and citizen participation, institutional set-up and organizational management, sustainability and legacy, and program management. Furthermore, they incorporate best practices from past organizers of the Games and lessons learnt from the procurement for large infrastructure projects.
The Organising Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs) in Paris (2024), Milano Cortina (2026), Los Angeles (2028), and Dakar (2026) for the Youth Olympic Games all contributed significantly to the drafting process by sharing their experiences and best practises in this crucial area.
Together with the rules, there is an online toolkit full of useful materials to help organizers of big sporting events run their activities efficiently. It has a checklist to assist sports event planners in determining where their delivery environment needs to be strengthened. This checklist would be helpful to any organization or committee charged with carrying out such initiatives, as it may be used in a variety of situations, from major infrastructure projects to worldwide events.
The previous three years have seen the combined development by the IOC and OECD of the guidelines and the online toolbox, both of which are also available in French.
The OECD released two guidelines in September 2023 to help stakeholders and organizers of international sporting, corporate, and cultural events track, measure, and assess the effects of such events on the social, economic, and environmental fronts using a sound, evidence-based methodology. The criteria are being pioneered by the IOC and OCOGs to enable consistent and credible assessment of the legacy of various Olympic Games editions. They were developed in conjunction with the IOC and other organizations.
In 2019, the IOC and OECD inked a memorandum of understanding to expand their cooperation in advancing ethics, integrity, and good governance in addition to peace and sustainable development in sport. Within this framework, the two organisations collaborate closely as co-founding partners via the International Partnership Against Corruption in Sport (IPACS).
Established in 2017, IPACS is a multi-stakeholder project aimed at bringing together all necessary parties to coordinate efforts and suggest workable solutions to combat corruption in sports. The selection of big sports events, the procurement of infrastructure and related services for such events, effective governance, and collaboration between law enforcement, criminal justice, and sports organizations have been the main areas of concentration for IPACS this far.
