Jan Vapaavuori, the head of the Finnish Olympic Committee, posed for a photograph at a spring meeting of the national committee in Helsinki on 30 May 2023. Vapaavuori on Saturday said Finland should only boycott Paris 2024 as part of a broader front in responding to boycott calls prompted by a decision by the International Olympic Committee to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete as neutrals in individual disciplines. (Antti Aimo-Koivisto – Lehtikuva)
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THE INTERNATIONAL Olympic Committee (IOC) on Friday decided that Russian and Belarusian athletes can complete as “individual neutral athletes” in at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.
Russian and Belarusian athletes, though, will not allowed to compete in team sports or display any flags, colours or other national identifications at the games.
Eight Russian and three Belarusian athletes are among the 4,600 athletes worldwide who have qualified for the Summer Olympics, according to the IOC. Over 60 Ukrainian athletes have also qualified for the games.
The decision to allow athletes from the two countries to the event drew immediate criticism across the sports community in Europe. The Finnish Olympic Committee, for example, was urged to boycott the games entirely.
Jan Vapaavuori, the director of the Finnish Olympic Committee, on Saturday conceded that the ruling was a disappointment. Finland and the Nordics, he reminded, have lobbied strongly for excluding Russia from international sporting events and opposed the return of Russian athletes to the international stage.
“We are nevertheless satisfied that our active lobbying contributed to the strict participation criteria for Russian and Belarusian athletes,” he wrote in a blog post. “The Nordics’ strict stance on the issue was made clear to everyone, and it is obvious that it has had an impact.”
Vapaavuori in his lengthy and firmly worded post also called out the media, debate culture and double standards of sports fans in Finland.
“The Finnish sports debate has for years supported unjustifiable double standards in regards to Russian athletes. Throughout [Russia’s war in Ukraine], Finnish NHL players have played I the same league with Russian players without the public, which has been rather pointed in regards to the Olympic movement, criticising or moralising too much – let alone making any more serious demands,” he argued.
He also emphasised that the value of honourable competition between peoples should not be forgotten altogether even though it is impossible to completely decouple sports and politics.
Finland, he outlined, should only consider boycotting the upcoming summer games as part of a broader international front.
“It is not in our national interest, not in terms of the sports movement or as a nation in other regards, to abandon the Nordic front and call for tougher measures than any other country,” wrote Vapaavuori.
Aleksi Teivainen – HT
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Source: www.helsinkitimes.fi
