World Athletics said on Friday that athletes from Russia and Belarus will remain banned from competition, including qualifying for the Olympics in Paris next year, as part of sanctions for the war in Ukraine.
The move sets up a high-profile showdown between one of the biggest sports federations and the International Olympic Committee.
The sports body, which regulates the rules of competition and the world championships for track and field, marathon and race walking, said that athletes and officials from Russia and Belarus would not be excluded from all the events “for the foreseeable future” and the group work will be done. to determine the necessary conditions for potential re-inclusion at a later date.
The policy puts World Athletics at the forefront of the rift in the sports world regarding the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes in global events. This also contradicted the comments of IOC president Thomas Bach who supported the neutral participation of athletes with Russian and Belarusian passports.
“The death and destruction we have seen in Ukraine over the past year, including the death of around 185 athletes, only made my decision on this matter”, said Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics.
The policy is the result of some bureaucratic maneuvering, as World Athletics initially said it would not include Russia and Belarus in March 2022.
At the time, Russian athletes were still under a ban imposed in 2015 for a state-sponsored doping program, a sanction lifted by the World Athletics Council on Thursday, paving the way for a reassertion of the exemption due to the Ukraine war.
Many sports are qualifying for next summer’s Paris Olympics, where athletes seek entry to the games based on international rankings, world championship results or other criteria set by sports federations.
The IOC, which governs the games but generally does not set eligibility criteria for the sport, has asked federations to include “neutral” athletes, to avoid potential boycotts.
In a speech on Wednesday before a political forum in his home country of Germany, Bach said: “If politics decides who can compete, then sport and athletes become political tools. Then it is impossible for sport to transfer its power.
Several sports bodies, including the International Fencing Federation, have voted in recent weeks to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to resume competition, prompting protests from Ukrainian fencers and their allies.
Last month, almost three dozen countries, including Great Britain, the US, Germany and Canada, wrote a letter to the IOC stating that “Russia and Belarus have their own hands to open the way for athletes to return to international sports. society, that is by ending the war that started “.