Alexey Bugaev, a Russian competing as a neutral in the upcoming Winter Paralympics, trains at the National Alpine Ski Center in Yanqing, China on Wednesday, March 2, 2022. Organizers will allow athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete when the Games open this week, despite mounting pressure to exclude them. (Chang W. Lee/The New York Times)

In reversal, Paralympics bars athletes from Russia and Belarus

03 Mar 2022, 13:13

On Wednesday night, organisers of the Paralympic Winter Games were resolute that they had no option except to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete. On Thursday afternoon, they were equally resolute when they came to the opposite conclusion.

In a stunning reversal, the International Paralympic Committee bowed to heavy internal pressure and barred athletes from Russia and Belarus on the eve of the opening ceremony, extending the global sporting isolation of both countries in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.

Citing threats by several federations to boycott the Paralympic Games, mounting discontent in the athletes’ village and fears that a “deteriorating” situation there could lead to violence, the International Paralympic Committee, or IPC, said the situation had changed so dramatically overnight that the viability of the Games would be in jeopardy if organizers did not expel the Russian and Belarusian delegations.

“The environment in the village is deteriorating,” said Andrew Parsons, president of the IPC. He said rising anger and threats by multiple national committees, some under pressure from their governments, to withdraw from the Games had made the situation “untenable.”

Russia’s sports minister, Oleg Matytsin, told journalists in Moscow that the country was preparing an immediate appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Switzerland that would seek to overturn the exclusion of Russian athletes before the Games open.

“Today’s decision of the International Paralympic Committee to bar our team is a blatant violation of athletes’ rights,” Matytsin said, according to the state-run news agency TASS.

The announcement came less than a day after the committee had said it would allow athletes from both countries to compete as neutrals in Beijing, a response to the invasion that was widely criticized as inadequate. By Thursday morning, Paralympic officials met again and decided they had little choice but to throw out the two teams.

Parsons said that there had been no reports of confrontations or violence between athletes, but that tensions were rising. He said there was a “huge” concern for the safety of participants, including 71 Russian athletes.

The move made the Paralympics the latest international sporting organization to bar Russian and Belarusian athletes and teams in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which was staged with Belarusian support.