A day after Paris marked a year to go until the 2024 Olympics, Ukrainian fencer Olga Kharlan was disqualified from participating in the world championships after she refused to shake hands with Russian Anna Smirnova.
Kharlan’s disqualification threw into sharp relief the political and organizational jeopardy that France and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is facing ahead of the Games.
Russia’s ongoing invasion in Ukraine has provided decision makers with major challenges, notably the key question of Russian and Belarusian athlete participation.
Meanwhile, riots, pension strikes, and complaints over “exorbitant” ticket prices in France itself threaten to derail public sentiment relating to the Olympics, set to take place 100 years after the capital last hosted the quadrennial event.
Russian controversy
The IOC has faced criticism for its stance on Russian and Belarusian athletes competing at the Olympics, while president Thomas Bach lamented Ukraine and Russia’s “diametrically opposed” views on neutral athletes’ participation in a speech in June.
In recent summer and winter Games, athletes from Russia have been permitted to take part under a neutral flag of the Russian and Belarusian Olympic Committees – with gold medalists from the nations not hearing the official national anthems on the podium.
Indeed, Smirnova was competing at the world championships in Milan as a neutral individual with official Russian participation in such tournaments outlawed. In March, the IOC announced a widely condemned recommended pathway to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to participate in international competitions despite the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. So far, no decision has been taken on Russian and Belarusian athletes’ participation at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Despite offering a workable pathway forward with our values-based recommendations, we are still confronted with two irreconcilable positions,” Bach said during the remote IOC session.
“The Russian side wants us to ignore the war. The Ukrainian side wants us to totally isolate anyone with a Russian and Belarusian passport. Either position is diametrically opposed to our mission and the Olympic Charter.”
