The readmission of Russian athletes with anthem and flag to the Milan Cortina 2026 Paralympics is causing discussion. Ukraine has announced a boycott of the opening ceremony on March 6 at the Verona Arenanot at the competitions, because it would mean preventing athletes from participating, among whom there are also those wounded from the war suffered starting from 2022, triggered by the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, four years ago, right between the Beijing 2022 Olympics and Paralympics.
The topic has its own complexity and different facets, which Giorgio Sandulli, lawyer, among the leading experts in sports law, among the members of the Sports Master at the Sapienza University of Rome and president of the Sports Consultantshelped us analyze.
Lawyer Sandulli, how do you interpret this readmission which is causing discussion around the world, after the Russian and Belarusian athletes had been excluded for violating the Olympic truce?
«In the meantime it must be said that the Olympic Committee (IOC/IOC) and the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) are mutually independent and act autonomously from each other, this explains the reiteration of the current conditions by the IOC President Kirsty Coventry. In reality the decision of the International Paralympic Committee on readmission was known, it was not taken now, even if it is only now being discussed, in the imminence of the Paralympics”.
When did it date back?
«On 27 September, when the International Paralympic Committee brought two resolutions to the Assembly to be voted on, one for the total exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes, and one for a partial suspension, both were rejected by a majority, and every ban was invalidated, this is the normative data from which we start. Faced with this decision, the FIS, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, reacted by deciding on its own suspension based on the principle of Russian and Belarusian nationality for athletes and teams without any distinction. That decision was challenged before the Court of Arbitration for Sports in Lausanne which responded on 2 December by declaring illegitimate a resolution so indiscriminate as to harm the individual rights of the athletes: therefore we have arrived at this situation, the IOC which currently has a suspension in force which however admits independent athletes, under the Olympic flag and Olympic anthem, but not the teams, and the Paralympic Committee which, however, no longer has any limitations”.
How can these discrepancies be explained? Just with different sensitivities?
«A premise must be made: when at the UN in 1992 the host country began to promote the approval of the resolution on the Olympic Truce – which was then repeated for every Olympics 7 months after the start – which indicated to the member states a commitment not to continue conflicting activities during the Games and in the ten days following and preceding them, the intention was to send a message from the Games to the world of promotion of peace. Given that the act had political but not legal value, it was probably never thought in thirty years that the wars underway in the world could have an effect on the Games.”
Yet it is true that there have already been “bans” in the past, in South Africa for Apartheid. Is it different?
«True, but decisions are never taken on the Olympic Committee’s own initiative: that one was triggered by the threat of a boycott from a group of African countries. Even at the time of the invasion of Ukraine, the IOC initially limited itself to publicly condemning and threatening sanctions. The ban was triggered later by the threat of not participating by some countries including the Baltic republics and Poland, major winter sports federations. The IOC, which must do some real politk to maintain a balance between all the countries of the world, decided at that point to completely ban Russians and Belarusians, the IPC followed and so did most of the international sports federations for their respective events. Result: the Beijing 2022 Paralympics was the first to apply the total ban.”
It was later relaxed by admitting individual athletes without anthem or flag as was done for the Italians who went to Moscow 1980, in spite of the Atlantic bloc’s boycott. When did it happen?
«Before Paris 2024, the IOC relaxed by giving the green light to individual Russian and Belarusian athletes who had not publicly supported the war to participate without anthem and flag, but not to teams representing the nations, and not to military athletes».
How can we explain the change?
«With the fact that the initial notice was written without specifying the behavior to be carried out to make it stop and without a limit: from a legal point of view, normally, an act that sanctions a behavior, on the one hand establishes a deadline for the sanction and on the other specifies which actions must be carried out to make it stop: none of this was in the notice, probably because it was thought that the war would end sooner, that the problem would not have to be raised at the next Olympics. A geopolitical problem is being created that is difficult for the CIO and IPC to sustain: how can we explain to those in the world in Senegal, or in Palestine or in Myanmar who are getting bombs in their heads that this war is being treated differently from the others? It is true that from a geopolitical point of view it has its specificities, but it is difficult to support towards those who suffer war elsewhere.”
Ukraine has announced that it will not participate in the opening ceremony. What effects will it produce?
«A political signal, also because withdrawing the athletes would have penalized the veterans and there are no tools and time to reinstate the ban, which was removed after a decision by the democratic and regular IPC Assembly and after a decision by the CAS, which the IPC Board alone could not review».
During these Games the topic of rule 50.2 of the Olympic Charter also emerged. How much could the case of the helmet in memory of the Ukrainian athlete have influenced the emergence of the ban removed from the Russians?
«It certainly contributed to bringing it to light by bringing the issue to the attention of public opinion. As for the athlete, he lost the Olympics with disqualification, but he certainly obtained great visibility for his gesture by not accepting the mediation of mourning: on the other hand that was not a case of private mourning, but a political act, for which the IOC leaves spaces for free expression, everywhere, as long as they are not inconsistent with the values of Olympism, on social media, even in official interviews, but leaving the rule that prohibits political and religious messages in the Olympic village, in ceremonies, on the competition fields during the competition and during the awards. My impression is that the IOC does not want to completely ban political messages but wants to retain control of this type of communication. We are moreover in the field of balancing rights.”
Does this also include the seizure of the European flag from the boy for which the organizing committee at the Santa Giulia Hockey Arena later apologized?
«I would be cautious, I would interpret it more as the misunderstood zeal of a controller who says no to everything out of fear of making a mistake, also because for example in Italy it is compulsory to display the European flag with the national one in institutional offices, even if once the case exploded the IOC would have done better to clarify. More problematic is the issue of the currencies of Haiti, where on January 4 the IOC rejected as political the image of Toussaint Louverture, former slave and leader of the revolution that in 1804 would have led to the birth of the first black republic. This perplexes me, because at this rate the whole story becomes political and there is no way out.”
What is at the root of all this anxiety, the fear for safety? The wound from the 1972 Munich attack on the Olympic village?
«Also, but there is also a delicate topic that we never think about, which gives meaning to the limit that has been set: if the IOC and IPC gave freedom of religious or political expression anywhere at the Games they would risk exposing athletes from non-democratic countries to the risk of their governments imposing on them expressions of thoughts that they do not individually share. Total openness, which for Europeans would only be an additional freedom, could become an instrument of pressure and even coercion for athletes from other countries.”
