there will be no Russians and Belarusians in fencing – Libération

2024-04-24 14:18:38

The delegation of Russian and Belarusian athletes who will be present in Paris under a neutral banner this summer will not include any fencing representatives, after none of them registered for the last Olympic qualifying tournament scheduled for this weekend in Luxembourg.

The beginning of a boycott that has not yet revealed its name? It is in fact confirmed: there will be no Russians or Belarusians at the Grand Palais in three months for the fencing events of the Paris Olympics. However, there was a final window for those who could claim to qualify under the status of neutral individual athlete, with the European Olympic qualifying tournament, organized from Friday April 25 to Sunday April 28, in Differdange in Luxembourg.

However, on Tuesday April 24, the deadline to check their name on the list of participants, no athlete from these two countries had registered for the event. “The reason for their absence is not known, there is no official statement or letter to explain it,” simply commented Giorgio Scarso, president of the European Fencing Confederation.

However, some of those absent had participated in the World Cup circuit in recent months as a neutral individual athlete (AIN), a status established by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which requires not having openly supported the the offensive launched in Ukraine by Russia in February 2022 or to be a member of a club linked to the Russian security forces to be able to claim to qualify for the Paris Games.

If the best Russian fencers were not deemed eligible for this status by the International Fencing Federation (FIE), others still had a final opportunity to qualify for the Games. Six tickets remain to be won in Differdange.

“We are not going to divide our team”

Should we understand that the threat of boycott brandished by the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, Stanislav Pozdniakov, has been carried out? A year earlier, when the FIE had distinguished itself by being the first to reintegrate Russian and Belarusian athletes, the man had warned the higher authorities of his intention to ignore the Olympic fencing events. At issue: the AIN status, which had been refused to the best shooters in his country. Starting with her daughter Sofia Pozdniakova, reigning Olympic champion in individual and team saber in Tokyo, but caught up in her connections with the Russian army. Or the swordswoman Valeria Kobzeva, denounced a few weeks before the Milan World Cup by the Ukrainian Ministry of Sports, who accused her of having “liked” certain publications from the CSKA Moscow football club in connection with the war in Ukraine.

“None of the Russian fencers will go to these Olympic Games,” the president of the Russian Fencing Federation, Ilgar Mamedov, reiterated more explicitly on April 11 to the specialized site Sports.ru. “We have made our principled position clear: we are not going to divide our team into those who please the West and those who, in their opinion, are ‘bad Russians’.” The Russian authorities have therefore walked their talk.

Go from Moscow

Should we see in this episode the beginnings of a generalized boycott? Despite these strict AIN constraints that only a few dozen athletes seem to be able to respect, Russian Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin seemed to rule out the prospect of a boycott in mid-March. But in the meantime, the IOC excluded Russians and Belarusians from the opening ceremony, arousing the ire of Moscow for whom the international body had “descended into racism and neo-Nazism”.

The fact remains that in wrestling, athletes from these two countries won their place at the Games at the beginning of April. In detail, 13 of the 36 places awarded during the Baku Olympic qualifying tournament were obtained by neutral individual athletes. Unless there is an express and formal counter-order from the Kremlin, and as long as the IOC definitively validates their AIN status, they should indeed be present in Paris.