It is quite likely that when, probably towards the end of this month, the International Olympic Committee starts sending out formal invitations to countries around the world asking them to come to Paris next year, Russia and Belarus will not find themselves in the guest list. The IOC, seen especially in Europe as pussyfooting around one of the most nettlesome problems it has been obliged to cope with in recent years, may be inclined to believe that the day which rids it of all complications seeded by the conflict in Ukraine will dawn all right, but news from neither the battlefield, nor Kyiv nor Moscow suggests a prompt end to hostilities. It has been substantially more than a few months since the neighbourly confrontation began, with each passing day hinting, certainly from the point of view of the Olympics, at a lot of powerful people appearing completely powerless to put a diplomatic end to a sport-related dispute which, if not got out of the way now, could blow up into a global crisis ahead of the next Summer Games.
It will be recalled that 1980 and 1984 had been marked by politically motivated boycotts, with Moscow and Los Angeles, respectively, as hosts. It was in 1988 in Seoul that the Olympics Movement was able to present once again a unified look of itself. But high-power confabulations around the 2024 show, could take skills of a higher order than the usual, implying that getting going now might not really be too early. The IOC finds itself, on the one hand, saddled with a Russia which simply does not want the Ukraine war to influence anything related to the Paris Olympics and, on the other, there are those European nations which want Russia and Belarus out because aggressors cannot be revelling in sport where the victims are there too.
Countries and sporting disciplines have been heard intermittently, but even an intra-sport consensus has been elusive as attitudes, polarised even before the first shot was fired in the battle, have hardened further. The IOC wants individual Russians to roll up, perform and claim such honours as they can if they have not been sponsored by or closely associated with Russia’s martial enterprise but it is not a stance endorsed by the whole of Europe, which would rather Russia was thrown out. The IOC smells a “double standard” as there are others in other clashes and face-offs, but the Paris Games will have to be salvaged yet, which makes the Committee’s life hard. It has said that a final decision could come as late as October, when its governing body is to meet in Mumbai, which even in anticipation fills India with pride primarily because ours is not a country familiar with the IOC’s history, which has long chapters cloaked in darkness. The world can only hope for the best option being chosen for Paris 2024.