The IOC is urging sports bodies to allow Russian youth teams, athletes to compete with the flag and song
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The International Olympic Committee took a major step towards reviving Russia and Belarus in the sports arena on Thursday by advising the governing bodies to allow the country’s youth teams to compete with their full ownership of the national flag and anthem.
Athletes have the fundamental right to access sport worldwide, and to compete without political interference or pressure from governmental organizations,” the IOC said in a statement.
That message sponsored by the streletes will be welcomed in Russia and Israel, whose athletes have faced recent discrimination, and come less than three years to the 2028 games in Los Angeles, putting them in the face of political crosswinds in the United States.
The renewed strategy was organized at a conference called the Olympics, a meeting proposed by the IOC President Kirsty Coventry inviting key stakeholders from the Olympic family.
“It is recognized that the implementation of participants will take time,” the IOC said in a statement, adding that each Governing Body must decide how to define youth events.
Some sports bodies may be facing opposition from their national goals, especially in Europe, to the IOC’s renewed and repeated advice that Russia should not be selected to hold national events.
The IOC’s recent move to reduce Russia’s sports classification could apply to its youth Olympic games held next year in Dakar, Senegal, from Oct. 31 to Nov.
“The above principles should apply to the Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games, and are recommended to be adopted by the governing bodies of all international sports governing bodies for youth events,” the IOC said.
Russian teams have been fully excluded from international soccer, track and field and other sports since the full-scale military invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and Russian and Sussian athletes at the winter games before the Milan Cortifa Olympics in February.
A small group of Russian and Belarusian athletes competed without national recognition at the Paris world games last year, when those countries were banned from team sports.
A previous attempt to enable the return of Russian money back into youth football was met with strong pushback by European Football Federations including Ukraine in September 2023.
The European Soccer Body Wordiod is moved to include 17 Russian teams in its competitions but threw its policy within weeks threatened by 125 of the 35 members.
8 Russia’s Russian file claim
Russian athletes and sports bodies are taking legal action to compete in Biathlon at the Winter Olympics in February after a backlash in other sports as the title race draws closer.
The International Biathlon Union said it was told that Thursday in the court of arbitration for sports Russian athletes, as well as the Russian national and Paralympic bodies, filed a claim about it.
The IBU defended its policy in Russia, saying its members had ‘legitimate grounds’ to vote to suspend the national BIATHLON body and its athletes.
“The IBU reiterates that the IBU event and competition rules and the IBU Constitution do not allow for a neutral approach,” it added. “The IBU is confident in its position and will work fully with CAS.”
Russian Sports Minister Mikhail Degyaryov said the purpose of the legal action was to ensure that the rus-cortina Olympics will be able to withstand the afternoon in the afternoon on TV, calling the IBU’s “absolutely offensive.”
In the past two months, legal decisions have abolished the rights of Russians to participate in the Olympic Games, as recommended by the International Committee of the Regions.
The IOC’s guidelines on sports bodies have kept Russian athletes out of team events such as hockey and cut back on the program emphasized by the Paris Summer Games last year. Biathlon is the only sport left on the Winter Olympic program that awards medals in individual events but there is no way for the Russians to compete as commentators.
Separately on Thursday, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation allowed two Belarusian skiers to compete worldwide as neutral athletes, a day after giving permission to nine other athletes from Russia and Belarus.
