Banned from the competition after all: Russian para ice hockey team in training (Beijing, 03/03/2022)
Inclusion or exclusion, that is the question. The fickle International Paralympic Committee (IPC) couldn’t make up its mind: should Russian and Belarusian athletes take part in the 13th Winter Paralympics in Beijing or not?
If the committee had decided on Wednesday that the athletes would be allowed to take part, albeit neutrally under the Paralympic flag, without national anthems and without being included in the medal table, it changed its mind again a day later. On Thursday, the IPC announced that Russia and Belarus were now excluded from the Paralympics, which begin on Friday, because of the war in Ukraine. Several associations, teams and athletes have threatened to boycott the games, which would have jeopardized the “practicability of the Paralympic Winter Games”. According to the IPC, the situation in the athletes’ villages has also “escalated,” making maintaining the safety of athletes “unsustainable.” The Russian Paralympic Committee said it reserves the right to appeal the decision to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).
“We at the IPC firmly believe that sports and politics should not be mixed up,” said IPC chief Andrew Parsons in a press release Thursday, but “through no fault of their own” the war has now come to these games, and behind the scenes many governments would influence »our cherished event«.
German organizations such as the German Disabled Sports Association (DBS) were outraged when the IPC announced on Wednesday that all female athletes were allowed to participate. ‘It’s disappointing and discouraging. In view of the daily horrors of war in Ukraine, we would not have thought such a decision possible,” DBS President Friedhelm Julius Beucher complained to the German press agency. He saw the change in decision to exclude the Russian and Belarusian athletes from the Paralympics in Beijing as a “wonderful about-face”. “We, the athletes, but also most of the National Paralympic Committees have taken an incredible burden off our shoulders.”
The Athleten Deutschland association, which wants to give athletes starting for the Federal Republic of Germany a say, does not want to separate sport and politics either. “The IPC’s decision to exclude the Russian and Belarusian athletes is correct,” Julia Hollnagel, spokeswoman for Athletes Germany, told Thursday young world. However, it only came about as a result of pressure from the athletes and their National Paralympic Committees, who opposed the IPC’s original position of allowing competitions under a neutral flag. This turnaround has shown how much influence athletes can exert together, while the IPC hides behind paragraphs. “The statements by the IPC show that it is still not resolute enough in tackling Russia’s war of aggression and the breach of the Olympic truce,” said Hollnagel im jW-Conversation.
While the most important thing in the idea of inclusion is that everyone belongs, that it is normal to be different, this does not seem to apply to Russian and Belarusian athletes – although the IPC’s self-chosen vision of “creating an inclusive world through parasport” is.