Anxious to “bring the world together”, the IOC has avoided boycotts and exclusions to bring together delegations from around the world at the Paris Olympics, but it has yet to succeed in making the event a peaceful bubble.
At a time when all “political propaganda” is prohibited by the Olympic Charter on the field or on the podiums, but authorized in the Olympic village and during press conferences, can the Games be overtaken by ongoing conflicts, notably the wars in Ukraine and Gaza?
Russians “neutral” and scrutinized
The Russian invasion of Ukraine with the support of Belarus, in February 2022, has long seemed to rule out any possibility of having athletes of the three nationalities coexist in Paris: Russians and Belarusians have been banned from world sport until March 2023 , and Ukrainians threatened to boycott the Games if they participated.
But once this position was abandoned by kyiv, in the summer of 2023, the IOC orchestrated a gradual reintegration of Russians and Belarusians into international competitions, under strict conditions: individually, under a neutral flag, and as long as they do not have not “actively supported the war in Ukraine” and are not under contract with the military or security agencies.
The body, which also banned them from parading on the Seine during the opening ceremony, has so far validated the qualification of 28 Russians and 19 Belarusians under a neutral banner, a list currently limited to nine disciplines (wrestling, trampoline, cycling, weightlifting, shooting, tennis, rowing, judo and canoeing) and required to be completed.
In any case, this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 330 Russians and 104 Belarusians at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
And these “neutral athletes” are promised permanent surveillance: any demonstration of support for the offensive in Ukraine, for example a “Z” symbolizing the invasion, would lead to a procedure that could go “as far as immediate exclusion from the Games”, warned the head of the IOC, Thomas Bach, to AFP at the end of April.
Palestinians want a platform
Since the fall, the IOC has tried to stay out of the war between Israel and Hamas by hiding behind its “two-state solution,” since the Israeli and Palestinian National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have coexisted since 1995, a legacy of the Oslo peace process.
He therefore never considered having Israeli athletes compete under a neutral banner, even though Israeli bombings in retaliation for the bloody attack of October 7 by Hamas destroyed the main sports institutions in Gaza and killed personalities in the Palestinian sports world, according to the Palestinian Olympic Committee.
The body, which according to the IOC should have “six to eight representatives” through invitations, nevertheless intends to make the Olympic Games a platform. “Paris is a historic and important moment to go and tell the world […] “Enough is enough,” declared its president, Jibril Rajoub, in mid-June.
On the Israeli side, the issue is above all security, as at each Olympic edition since the deadly hostage taking in Munich in 1972: for the moment, the delegation plans to “participate in the opening ceremony like any other team” , according to its Olympic committee.
Afghanistan without the Taliban
The return of the Taliban to power in Kabul in the summer of 2021 has put sports authorities in a dilemma: how to balance dialogue and pressure to help athletes and their entourage, in exile or remaining in the country, without endorsing the ban on women practicing sport?
In mid-June, the IOC announced that it had secured the presence in Paris of an Afghan team of three men (in athletics, swimming and judo) and three women (athletics and cycling), without revealing their identities. All live abroad, except the judoka, the director general of the Afghan Olympic Committee, Dad Mohammad Payenda Akhtari, later clarified.
“As women’s sport is suspended in Afghanistan, the three women were not sent from the country,” he explained. The response that will be given to their performances remains one of the unknowns of the Games, especially since the IOC intended in mid-June to “launch a very strong symbol to the world and to Afghanistan”, according to its spokesperson Mark Adams .
Afghanistan, which has the third largest contingent of exiles in the world, will also have five representatives on the Refugee Olympic Team, including its captain, cyclist Masomah Ali Zada.
The young woman plans to go and encourage her compatriots under the Afghan flag: “I am so happy that there are three Afghan women at the Olympics and that they are equal to the men,” she recently confided to AFP .