Bonn, Europe Brief News – Organisers of the Winter Olympics reversed their policy to ban Russian and Belarusian Athletes after receiving threats of withdrawals and growing friction in the Athlete’s Village.
Earlier, the International Paralympic Committee announced that it would allow Russian and Belarusian Athletes to compete in winter Paralympics but only as neutral participants.
Andrew Parsons, President of International Paralympics said “ The war has now come to these games and behind the scenes, many governments are influencing our cherished event. We were trying to protect the games from War”.
He further added that IPC did not expect to face such a negative reaction by just letting Russian and Belarusian Athletes compete as Neutral athletes. And it was not Only Ukrainian who disliked the Russian and Belarusian participation, but everyone across the board.
Parsons said, “We do not have reports of any specific incidents of aggression or anything like that, but it was a very volatile environment in the athlete’s village”.
He mentioned that we did not expect such a rapid escalation as entire delegations or teams within the delegation decided not to participate in the event in the presence of Russians and Belarusian Athletes.
Parsons said “ We do believe that the Russian Paralympics committee and the Belarusian paralympic committee may take legal action. But the facts that we express here led us to understand that this was the right decision to be taking”.
Russian Winter Olympics committee to take legal action
The Russian Paralympics committee called the decisions to expel its athletes baseless and illegal. The committee said, “ Athletes have not done anything which could be interpreted as being involved in the ongoing political complications”.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the situation is disastrous as yesterday one decision was taken and today the committee took another decision.
Parsons mentioned that he felt sorry for the 71 Russian and 12 Belarusian athletes for not being allowed to compete in the upcoming event.
He said, “ No one is happy with the decision but certainly this is the best decision for the Paralympic games to go ahead”.
The IPC now joins sports like soccer, track, hockey, basketball and a dozen others who imposed blanket bans on Russian and Belarusians.
The International Olympic committee forced sports organisations to drop Russian and Belarusian athletes but let individual governing bodies take the final decision on this matter.
