He is wrong though. And this a-political stance is the opposite of why the Olympics was started. Fight in sports not on the battlefield!
Wait, are you saying he’s wrong and that individuals should be punished for acts of their government?
Well, you can really zoom in on the individual, and decide. But if the person is in the military, or completely on the Russian government’s dime, they are spokespeople for that government. That government is not welcome, by extension the athlestes are not welcome. The olympics should not be a platform for idols of the russian federation to gain a platform.
Will that standard be applied consistently? Will USA athletes be punished for the acts of their government? British? Saudi? Isreali?
Because it not, it becomes clear that this has nothing to do with principles and everything to do with politics.
Err, no. All countries should be held to an equivalent standard.
exactly, these countries take pride when winning, no more pride for them,ç
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I wonder why USian athletes are still allowed to compete under their nation’s flag, seeing as their government will invade or meddle with whoever it damn well likes.
Because we’re useful as Allies.
Allies the way that the mob protection racket is allied with local business owners.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last week, the IOC said individual athletes from Russia and and its ally Belarus who had qualified for the Paris summer games would be allowed to compete without flags, emblems or anthems of their countries.
Mr Bach was speaking exclusively to the BBC at the UN Global Refugee Forum in Geneva on Wednesday.
Olympic sports federations had asked the IOC to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete but with no affiliation to their nations.
This was despite a number of countries - including the US and UK - calling for an all-out ban amid the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Ukraine itself suggested it might boycott the games, with President Volodomyr Zelensky saying Russian athletes “cannot be covered up with some pretended neutrality.”
Mr Bach dismissed the threats of a boycott, saying countries that disagree “are allowed to have different political opinions”.
The original article contains 362 words, the summary contains 142 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
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I agree with this in principle, but the way they were allowed to compete as the “Russian Olympic Committee” was bullshit. You can’t have a team called “totally not Russia (wink)” and expect that to be a meaningful punishment for the nations leaders
I think the athletes should only be able to compete as citizens of the world with no reference or acknowledgement of the banned country allowed.
That will never work as long as they’re the only country in that situation. They would need to be mixed with athletes from other unrelated countries for this to make sense.
The point isn’t to disguise them. The point is to call attention to their country’s misdeeds by refusing them the honor of flying their colors. Perhaps the individual athletes should still win medals, but the IOC wouldn’t assign the credit to Russia, who would not be eligible for them.
