Sports chiefs face losing battle to keep sport separate from politics

IOC president Kirsty Coventry’s desire is that “politics does not take over on the field of play”, but Ukraine and former executives from her organisation have told AFP that politics and sport remain inseparable. Coventry’s view will be sorely tested when Ukrainian and Russian athletes — the nations embroiled in a war sparked by Russian President Vladimir Putin launching an invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — compete side-by-side in the Youth Olympics which start in the Senegalese capital Dakar on Saturday. The 13 Russian athletes will be able to parade with their national flag and hear their national anthem at an Olympic event for the first time since the 2020 Winter Youth Games in Lausanne. The restoration of such symbols fits with the approach that Coventry indicated she would follow when she spoke at the EU Sporting Forum in Cyprus earlier this year.

“Athletes can only inspire us if they are able to compete,” the Zimbabwean two-time Olympic swimming gold medallist said. “They can only do so if we keep sport strictly neutral ground, if politics does not take over on the field of play,” she added. Ukraine Sports Minister Matviy Bidnyi dismisses that view. “Any conversation about returning Russian athletes to the international arena can only happen after the war ends, a just peace is established, every single abducted Ukrainian child is returned home, and international law is fully restored,” he told AFP. “Until that moment, isolation is not political — it is a matter of basic human decency. ” Former International Olympic Committee marketing executive Terrence Burns told AFP that globally speaking, “sport has never been separate from politics”. “When I hear anyone use that phrase it sounds naive at best and cynical at worst,” he said. “The real principle is neutrality. The…