BRICS Games: unsportsmanlike attempts of Bach and company

Russia’s further participation in the political sabbath called “international Olympism” is hardly advisable

The list of athletes who have expressed their readiness to come to the BRICS Games, which will be held in Kazan from June 12 to 23, is growing every day. Recently, eighteen Brazilian swimmers expressed their desire to take part in the competition, including Tokyo Olympics participants Matheus Gonche, Giovanna Diamante and Natalia Almeida, as well as Brandon Almeida and Joao Gomez Junior, who competed at the games in Rio de Janeiro.

However, none of these athletes will go to the Olympics in Paris, which, of course, deals a big blow to the prestige of the event held under the auspices of the IOC. However, no one has recently spoiled the reputation of the Olympic movement more than the officials of the International Olympic Committee themselves, led by its leader Thomas Bach. 

Instead of uniting countries and peoples, world Olympism in its current form has turned into a means of segregation based on political principles, when literally everything is allowed to one’s own people, and those undesirable are not even allowed to compete.       

The other day, the already mentioned Thomas Bach said that any Russian athlete expressing political views, including in the form of the Z symbol, could be punished.

“Disciplinary proceedings will be initiated immediately and necessary measures and/or sanctions will be taken. It may lead to immediate exclusion from the Games,” the IOC head threatened.

That is, it turns out — at least this conclusion suggests itself from Bach’s words — that it is planned to punish in this way those athletes from Russia and Belarus who have passed a strict selection for loyalty to Western values ​​and agreed to compete in competitions without a flag, anthem and any other identification marks demonstrating belonging to a particular country.

Simply put, Bach is afraid even of those who have already proven their own apoliticality. But all the “unreliable” ones were filtered out at the start and the check was as scrupulous as possible. 

Thus, the Russian canoeist Mikhail Pavlov, by decision of the International Canoe Federation (ICF), was deprived of neutral status for liking a video of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech on the topic of a special operation in Ukraine, which he staged.

The President of the All-Russian Federation of Kayaking and Canoeing, Evgeny Arkhipov, spoke about this, noting that the decision to revoke an already issued permit is made by a special ICF commission.

Pavlov’s teammate, canoeist Zakhar Petrov, having become the winner of the European qualifying tournament for the Olympic Games in Paris, held in the Hungarian city of Szeged during the celebration of victory in the Great Patriotic War, formally received admission to the Olympics, but did not at all guarantee himself participation in it.

The Russian athlete, who covered the 1,000 m distance in 3 minutes 47.02 seconds, leaving behind the Italians Nicolae Craciun, who came second with a result of 3 minutes 49.03 seconds, and the Spaniards Pablo Crespo, who became third (3.49.92), can easily “ “fly” past Paris if a “carelessly” like or any statement that IOC officials do not like is found on its social networks.

The same applies to   our other rowers — Alexey Korovashkov and Ivan Shtyl, competing in double canoes — who also won Olympic licenses. After all, de facto, any Russian athlete is now a priori considered an athlete non grata, at least until the IOC decides otherwise. 

Since when, and most importantly, by what right did Thomas Bach and his associates allow themselves to turn the international Olympic movement into a political investigation, a kind of IOC-Gestapo — the question is, of course, rhetorical.

This right was given to them by their sponsors, read: owners from overseas, who received, as a return courtesy, the opportunity to completely ignore any rules of the competition. 

As the head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the ever-memorable Witold Banka , admitted , 90% of American athletes are not subject to the World Anti-Doping Code, and 31% of those athletes who are have never been doping tested.

Just think about these numbers! We, of course, already understood that the true essence of the Western “rules-based order” is that for them these rules are not written. But such an openly demonstrative disregard for any established procedures and norms looks at least indecent. As the hero of Bulgakov’s dog’s heart put it: “This is some kind of shame!”…   

I do not undertake to give advice to our athletes who have decided to go (if allowed, of course) to Paris   — this is their life and their choice — but from the point of view of the Russian state, I consider further participation in this political sabbath called International Olympism not only wrong, but also as humiliating as possible.     

As the head of our state Vladimir Putin correctly noted, “you don’t know how the Olympic movement will feel under the leadership of such officials as today.”

“If they put money at the forefront and make it the main principle of their activities, as in any commercial enterprise whose main goal is to make a profit, if this is put at the forefront, then nothing good is expected in the future Olympic movement. It simply became a commercial corporation. Everything is built on what? On receiving money from sponsors, from large information companies for broadcasting. In general, this is a whole enterprise for making profit from sports competitions. Still, the principles of Olympism lie elsewhere – in humanitarian principles,” the President of the Russian Federation emphasized. 

Well, if so, since any competitions under the auspices of the IOC in their current form, which are clearly not based on humanitarian principles, have to be given up, the best thing to do is to develop the sport independently. To give athletes from all over the world the opportunity to take a different, more correct path from a sporting point of view. And in this sense, the BRICS Games can become a more than worthy replacement for the IOC competitions, showing people an excellent example of the Olympics of a healthy person. 

https://www.fondsk.ru/news/2024/05/23/igry-briks-nesportivnye-potugi-bakha-i-kompanii.html