El Russian sports ministerOleg Matitsin, trusted this Thursday that Russian athletes will be able to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and he believed that the suspension of athletes from this competition “would be a crime.”
“Time will tell. We are prepared for everything (…), but I hope that common sense will prevail,” Matitsin was quoted as saying by the RIA Nvosti news agency. The Russian minister assured that at the moment there is no need to create “alternative games” for Russian athletes. “Many federations say that the development of sport without Russia is impossible,” he said.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommended to federations and competition organizers that “they do not invite or allow the participation of Russian or Belarusian athletes or leaders” in any of them due to the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
This measure remains in force to this day and IOC sources recently expressed doubts that the Russians can qualify for the 2024 Olympics, since the process begins almost two years before the competition itself.
Last June, the Russian Mara Lasitskenetriple world champion in high jump, confronted the president of the IOC, the German Thomas Bach, for supporting the suspension of Russian athletes for political reasons. The athlete assured that the sanction against the athletes “It did not stop the war but it unleashed a new one, around sport, which is already impossible to stop”.
The 2024 Olympics will take place between July 26 and August 11 in Paris.
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