Conditions for Russian athletes' access to int'l competitions discriminatory - ROC commission

MOSCOW. Feb 22 (Interfax) - The conditions for allowing Russian athletes to compete internationally, based on International Olympic Committee (IOC) recommendations, are discriminatory, a Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) commission has concluded.

"Members of the Commission have agreed that said conditions for participation by Russian athletes are unlawful and discriminatory," a statement published on the ROC website on Thursday said.

In many cases, the restrictive measures were "clearly used for the purposes of dishonest competition so as to eliminate the strongest Russian athletes," it said.

A discussion of the conditions involved a ROC commission analysis of the practices that international sports organizations are using to apply the restrictive measures based on the IOC's March 28, 2023 recommendations, it said.

In particular, the criteria for participation in the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics only allow Russian and Belarusian passport holders to compete as individual neutral athletes, not as teams, as these are banned. So are those athletes and support staff, who have actively expressed their support for the special operation in Ukraine or are members of the armed forces or security agencies in their countries.

Use of flags, anthems, colors, and other identifiers of Russia or Belarus is prohibited, and officials from these countries will be barred from the Olympics.

In addition, athletes will be required to undergo an anti-doping process and sign the new terms of participation, which include a promise to respect the Olympic charter.

On March 28, 2023, the IOC recommended that international federations allow Russians and Belarusians to compete, provided they do not support the special military operation and are not involved with military sports societies.