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The IOC barred Russian athletes from participating within the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics on July 26 and criticised the Kremlin for planning to carry its personal Friendship Games to rival these held in Paris, following which didn’t go down nicely in Russia.
Russia launched a livid tirade on the International Olympic Committee on Wednesday, arguing the IOC’s restrictions on Russian athletes and its criticism of the Moscow-organised Friendship Games amounted to “neo-Nazism”.
The IOC on Tuesday each barred Russian athletes from participating within the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics on July 26 and criticised the Kremlin for planning to carry its personal “Friendship Games” to rival these held within the French capital.
“These decisions demonstrate how far the IOC has moved away from its stated principles and slipped into racism and neo-Nazism,” Russian international ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova mentioned in a briefing.
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The IOC suspended Russia from the 2024 Games final yr, however gave the inexperienced mild for its athletes to compete as neutrals so long as they didn’t actively help the Kremlin’s assault on Ukraine.
This impartial standing forces Russian athletes to “renounce any association with their homeland, with their citizenship, with their history, culture and people,” Zakharova argued.
“The IOC’s decisions are wrongful, unjust and unacceptable,” she mentioned.
“We are outraged by the unprecedented discriminatory conditions imposed by the International Olympic Committee on Russian athletes.”
Russia’s fury comes a day after the IOC issued a strongly-worded assertion accusing the Kremlin of “politicising sport” by planning to carry its personal Friendship Games.
Announced a number of months in the past, the primary version of the Summer Friendship Games is “planned to be held in Moscow and Yekaterinburg” subsequent September, the IOC mentioned, with the primary winter version to happen in 2026 in Sochi, the venue for the extremely controversial 2014 Winter Olympics.
The IOC known as on the sporting world and governments invited by Moscow “to reject any participation in and support of” the occasion, however stopped quick of sanctioning those that participate.
The Kremlin warned the IOC towards such sanctions on Wednesday.
“This is intimidation of the athletes. It completely undermines the credibility of the IOC,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov mentioned.
Tensions between Moscow and the Olympic physique had already been working excessive for years over a protracted-working doping scandal which noticed Russians barred from competing underneath their very own flag within the 2020 Tokyo Games.
The IOC accused Moscow in the identical assertion of “total disrespect for the global anti-doping standards and the integrity of competitions”, citing issues made final week by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in mild of the institutionalised doping on the Sochi Winter Olympics 10 years in the past.
Athletes from Russia and Belarus have confronted sanctions from a myriad of sports activities since Moscow launched its assault on Ukraine in February 2022.
Over the previous yr a quantity of Olympic sports activities have eased restrictions, permitting athletes from each international locations to return to competitors underneath sure circumstances.
Sportspeople from Russia and Belarus will compete in Paris as “Individual Neutral Athletes”.
But opponents from each international locations stay banned from the game of athletics.
(This story has not been edited by News18 workers and is printed from a syndicated information company feed – Associated Press)
