Russian and Belarus athletes have been allowed to compete in Beijing by the International Paralympic Committee, but “Neutral Banner”.
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Twelve days separate the extinguishing of the Olympic flame and the ignition of the Paralympic flame, Friday, March 4th, Beijing. Twelve days during which the Olympic truce flew flash. By deciding, in the night of Wednesday, February 24, to invade Ukraine, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, provoked the ban on Russian sport and Belarusian, for his support in Moscow. The Paralympic Winter Games, which take place until March 13, see the shadow of the conflict in Ukraine placing on them.
Urgent, the International Paralympic Committee (CIP) – The Organizer of the Games – condemned, in Online release Wednesday, March 2 ,” The rupture of the Olympic truce by governments of Russia and Belarus “, who” could not remain unpunished “. And announced that the athletes of both countries could participate in the event but “under neutral banner”, without being recorded in the table of medals. Concretely, the Russian and Belarus delegations will scroll under the Paralympic flag at the opening ceremony and will be deprived of their national anthem – which was already the case for Russia at the Olympic Games since the institutionalized doping scandal that broke out after the Olympics of Sochi in 2014. In addition, in case of victory, Russian athletes and Belarus “will have to cover the symbols and flags of their countries on their equipment”.
Since the beginning of the week, the CIP was under pressure from many actors, sports and political. Monday, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) had, in an unprecedented decision, breaking up with years to boast the apolitism of sport, called the sports bodies to exclude Russia from their competitions. In the wake of sanctions launched by the powerful football federations – the European Confederation (UEFA) and, above all, the International Federation (FIFA) -, the entire Russian sport found each other on the touch.
The “dilemma” of the organizers
The International Paralympic Committee is not a sub-chapel of the powerful IOC. And his decisions, sometimes, differ. “These two institutions do not work in the same way, explains Patrick Clasters, a historian of sport and the Olympism and professor at the University of Lausanne. The IOC gives its instructions to the International Federations, and then gives themselves to them for Taking decisions. For its part, the CIP does not have this “filter” of the international federations – there is none in Handisport – which changes the paradigm. “So, at the Rio de Janeiro games, In 2016, the CIP can not rest on the international federations by telling them to exclude Russian athletes, he had made the decision to suspend Paralympic Games.
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