Russia will not be competing at the 2024 Olympics, and yet, it is everywhere in Paris. It is in stories about politics and war; in sports and cyber-security. On Tuesday, Russia was linked to yet another kind of story: Domestic crime, with Agence-France Press reporting a Russian man was arrested for “organizing events likely to lead to destabilization” this month. This is unfolding as Canadian athletes get settled before the Opening Ceremony on Friday. Below, Postmedia explains how we got here, and what it means for the Games and those who are poised to compete this summer.
Why do I have this weird feeling of Déjà vu?
You might be middle-aged, or you might have an interest in history. Geopolitics shaped the Olympic movement of the early 1980s, first with a widespread boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, followed by a reciprocal boycott of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles.
On March 21, 1980, U.S. president Jimmy Carter announced his country would not send a single athlete to the Summer Games following the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan, in 1979. Dozens of countries would follow suit, including Canada.
“Even though we’re not going, I’m still opposed to the boycott,” Canadian sprinter Angella Taylor told the CBC that spring. “All the Canadian people say, ‘Oh, it will show the Russian people.’ The Russian government is not answerable to their people – they never have been.”
The Soviets, predictably, boycotted the 1984 Summer Games, held in Los Angeles, with an official statement alleging an “anti-Soviet campaign launched by reactionary circles in the United States with the connivance of the official authorities.”
What happened this time?
In October 2023, the International Olympic Committee formally suspended the Russian Olympic Committee, after Russia absorbed sports organizations from occupied territory through Eastern Ukraine.
The ruling left the door open a crack for individual athletes. According to the IOC, it would reserve the right to “decide about the participation of individual neutral athletes with a Russian passport” for the 2024 Paris Olympics, as well as the upcoming 2026 Winter Games in Italy.
Russia had already been ejected from another global sporting event, with FIFA removing the country from World Cup qualifying in 2022. (The global ban remains in force, which is why Russia was also absent from the UEFA European Championship this summer.)
What does that mean?
Russia has not been officially recognized as a country at the Olympics in eight years – since the 2016 Rio Games – after evidence of a state-sponsored doping program was uncovered following the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi. (According to a report in The New York Times, at least 15 Russian medal winners were allegedly part of that program.)
As of Sunday, 15 athletes carrying a Russian passport – and 17 from Belarus – were cleared to compete in Paris. They will not be permitted to wear their country’s colours, they are not allowed to compete under their country’s flag and they will not be included in the parade of nations during the Opening Ceremony on Friday.
According to IOC rules, athletes invited to compete must not have any connection to their country’s military, and they must demonstrate they do not actively support the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Officially, they will be classified as Individual Neutral Athletes – or Athlètes Individuels Neutres (AIN).
Daniil Medvedev, a former world No. 1 in men’s tennis, is among the Russian passport-bearing athletes expected to compete in Paris. He played at the Tokyo Games – among more than 330 Russian athletes — and described the experience as “something special.”
“I decided for myself that whenever I can play Olympics, I want to be there — I want to represent what I can represent,” he told reporters in April. “If it’s not under the flag, you know, I know who I am; I know why I play tennis.”
What happens is a Russian athlete wins a gold medal?
They will not hear their country’s anthem, nor will they see their flag anywhere in the venue, as per IOC rules. Instead, the flag of Individual Neutral Athletes will fly, along with this 80-second song written solely for this purpose.
The medals they win will not be included in the overall tally of nations.
No government officials from Russia have been invited to attend the Games, so they would not be on hand for the post-victory photo opportunity.
How is Russia handling this?
During his traditional year-end press conference in December, Russian President Vladimir Putin did not advocate boycotting the Paris Olympics. According to remarks relayed by Reuters, though, he did leave it as an open question: “If the IOC’s artificial conditions are designed to cut off the best Russian athletes and portray at the Olympics that Russian sport is dying, then you need to decide whether to go there at all.”
The Russian judo federation is not sending any of its athletes.
“Until the very end,” the federation said in a release last month, according to Reuters, “we had hoped that common sense and a desire to hold full-fledged Olympic Games with athletes from Russia and Belarus would prevail over political intrigues.”
Earlier this month, a group of 10 Russian wrestlers declined an invitation to compete.
In a statement, the Russian federation cited what it called “the unsportsmanlike selection principle that guided the International Olympic Committee when forming the list of eligible athletes, the purpose of which is to undermine the principle of unity of our team.”
It has been reported the 2024 Olympics will not be broadcast on conventional television in Russia.
How do Canadian athletes feel?
Canada won 10 gold medals at the 1984 Los Angeles Games, more than it has won at any Summer Olympics. Canadian athletes won seven gold medals three years ago in Tokyo, tied for the second-highest total.
Strictly from the perspective of the medal podium, Russia’s absence creates opportunity.
The absence of those athletes, though, obviously represents something more important than medals. And something far more complicated.
“They haven’t cleaned up their house,” race walker Evan Dunfee told The Canadian Press. “There’s still systematic problems on the doping side of things. I view it through that lens a little bit still partly because that’s a world I know way better.”
And then there is the core issue.
“I’m very much in support of Ukraine and Ukrainian athletes,” Canadian distance runner Charles Philibert-Thiboutot told The Canadian Press. “To me, being a Ukrainian athlete and having to line up beside a Russian athlete I would probably be devastated. However, I do think that putting conditions on athlete participation based on army enrolment or political engagement or political views is really something that is tricky.
“I’m all for the Ukrainian athletes, but how do we handle this is a very difficult question.”