On Tuesday, July 7, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) lifted the restrictions imposed on Russian athletes, who will be able to return to team sports and participate in qualifying for the 2028 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, without immediately returning their anthem and flag.
This small-step reintegration, recommended now to international federations in their respective sports, is accompanied by specific requirements in anti-doping monitoring in view of “the skepticism of the global sports community”, specifies the IOC in a press release.
Each Russian athlete “returning to international competitions” will thus have to undergo “several tests”, according to a program jointly set by the international federations with the International Testing Agency.
More broadly, their return to the fold of world sport remains more cautious than that of the Belarusians, decided at the beginning of May by the IOC without any particular conditions: they were able to find their anthem like their colors, leaving the status of athletes under a neutral banner.
Concerning the Russians, the IOC intends to decide “in due time on the use, during the Olympic Games, of the Russian flag, anthem and colors, or any other symbol”, leaving the international federations to set their conditions in the meantime.
No events organized in Russia
For the time being, the Olympic body will also not organize events in Russia or invite representatives of the Russian state.
Meeting in Lausanne, the IOC Executive Board “provisionally” lifted the suspension of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), pronounced in the fall of 2023, on the grounds that it no longer counts among its members sports organizations from occupied Ukrainian regions. It will nevertheless continue to “closely monitor” its activities in these territories.
A major sporting nation, Russia has been deprived of its colors in the Olympic arena since 2016, first due to the state-orchestrated doping scandal, which allowed it to compete under the Olympic flag (2018) then that of the ROC (2021 and 2022).
And as soon as the Beijing Winter Olympics ended, in February 2022, the Russian army invaded Ukraine with the support of Belarus, triggering a series of sporting sanctions commensurate with Western indignation at this invasion.
