(Kyiv) The International Olympic Committee will triple its direct financial assistance to Ukrainian athletes so that they can “hoist high” their flag during the 2024 Paris Games and then the 2026 Winter Games, the IOC President announced on Sunday, Thomas Bach.
Posted at 5:36 p.m.
Traveling to Kyiv, Thomas Bach, who was speaking alongside Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, also indicated that “the time had not come” to change the position of the IOC, which recommended an exclusion of Russian and Belarusian athletes of all international sporting events.
“We support them [les sportifs ukrainiens] so that we can see them at the Olympics in Paris 2024 and at the Winter Olympics in 2026 in Cortina-Milan […]may the Ukrainian flag be hoisted high,” he said.
“To this end, the IOC will triple the fund we established at the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [le 24 février dernier] from 2.5 to 7.5 million US dollars, which is only the contribution of the International Olympic Committee,” he continued.
Thomas Bach specified that the Ukrainian Sergueï Bubka, former star of the pole vault and president of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, continued for his part his coordination work to raise other funds.
A conference of Olympic movement donors, including IOC partners and sponsors, will also be convened “during the year” to help rebuild Ukrainian sports infrastructure, the IOC President also indicated.
“We also reassured the President [Zelensky] that we maintain the position that we adopted at the very beginning of the war, which is very clear […]including our recommendations to federations [sportives] not to invite Russian and Belarusian athletes to international competitions,” he said. “Now is not the time to lift these recommendations. »
It is in this context that the organizers of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, underway in London, have decided to exclude Russian and Belarusian players, including world number one, Russian Daniil Medvedev, and his compatriot Andrey Rublev (N.8) as well as Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka (6e and semi-finalist last year on the London lawn).