The UK team is likely to drop the idea of boycotting the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris if Russian and Belarusian athletes are allowed to compete. This was reported by the newspaper on February 3 Daily Mail.
The UK team is unlikely to support a boycott of Paris 2024 despite the government organizing a global summit to discuss plans to block the proposed inclusion of Russian athletes.
According to the newspaper, the athletes are ready to accept the position of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), despite the negative reaction of the British authorities.
Earlier in the day, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas said the country could boycott the 2024 Paris Olympics if athletes from Russia and Belarus were allowed to compete. According to her, Tallinn is currently trying to convince its allies that the presence of Russians and Belarusians at the Olympic Games is wrong.
On the same day, the Minister of Sports and Tourism of Poland, Kamil Bortnichuk, announced that the ministers of sports of 40 countries of the world would issue a joint statement on February 10 regarding the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris.
On the eve it became known that the IOC has not yet made a decision about the participation of athletes from Russia and Belarus in the Olympic Games in 2024 and at the moment does not undertake to assess the likelihood that this will happen.
At the same time, the official representative of the White House, Karine Jean-Pierre, stressed that if participants from the Russian Federation and Belarus are admitted to international competitions, the use of official state flags, coats of arms and anthems should continue to be prohibited.
Meanwhile, the organizers of the Paris Olympics said they would follow the decisions of the IOC regarding the admission of Russian and Belarusian athletes to international events. They also noted that they wish “the competitions to be held in the spirit of peace and respect for the values of brotherhood and solidarity.”
Prior to that, on January 27, IOC President Thomas Bach said that athletes from the Russian Federation and Belarus could participate in the 2024 Summer Olympics under a neutral flag. He stressed that the boycott of Ukraine, which was threatened by the Minister of Youth and Sports Vadym Gutzeit, does not correspond to the committee’s mission.
On February 28, the IOC recommended that international sports federations not allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in international competitions due to the situation around the Russian Federation and Ukraine.
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