The chairman of the Olympic Committee reacted to the discussion about allowing Russian athletes to the Paris Olympics.
International The IOC Olympic Committee decided on Friday to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in the Paris Olympics as “neutral athletes”, without national symbols.
Russian athletes are not allowed to participate in team sports or e.g. to athletics.
The decision caused shock in Europe. In Finland, many demanded the Olympic Committee to boycott the Paris Games completely.
On Saturday, the chairman of the Olympic Committee Jan Vapaavuori defended the organization in strong words in a blog post On the website of the Olympic Committee.
Free mountain considers the IOC’s decision disappointing. He reminds that Finland and the other Nordic countries actively pushed for the exclusion of Russia from international sports activities and then opposed the return of the Russians.
“Nevertheless, we are satisfied that our active influence work has contributed to how strict conditions the participation of Russians and Belarusians is possible. The strict line of the Nordic countries has not been unclear to anyone in the international sports community, and it is clear that it has been important,” writes Vapaavuori.
In a long text, he defends the solution not to boycott the games and harshly criticizes the media, discussion culture and, more broadly, Finns, e.g. of double standards.
“By the way, the Finnish sports debate has been supporting poorly justified double standards regarding Russian athletes for years. Throughout the war, Finnish NHL players have played in the same leagues with Russian players, without the fact that the audience, which is quite advanced in terms of the Olympic Movement, would have even disapproved of this or moralized it, let alone any more serious claims.”
In Vapaavuori’s opinion, “the value of noble competition between different nations cannot and should not be completely rejected”, although at the same time sports and politics cannot be separated from each other.
The chairman in my opinion, a boycott would also be considered in Finland if there was a wider international movement behind the idea. He doesn’t want to exclude Finland from competitions, while at the same time such an idea does not exist even among countries that share the same world of values.
“It is not in our national interests, neither in the sports movement nor as a nation in general, to stand out even from the Nordic front and push to the end more drastic measures than any other country.”
“Even Ukraine is not tuning into boycotts at the moment, but is planning to send a big team to the Paris Games. A situation where Finland would go to the barricades with anti-Russian arguments while Ukraine is preparing to participate in the Games at the same time would be absolutely strange.”
Vapaavuori says at the end of his long article that if the world “still changes in some relevant way around us”, then the situation of the Paris Games will be re-evaluated.
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