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The Belarusian Sports Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) has reported that a large number of athletes have been victims of regime brutality in Belarus. On Monday came the response from the IOC.
President Alexander Lukashenko, who also chairs the country’s Olympic Committee, has been excluded from the Tokyo Games.
Various other high representatives For the Belarusian Olympic Committee, including Lukashenko’s son Viktor, and Dmitry Baskov, president of the country’s ice hockey federation, they are also denied accreditation.
– This decision is addressed to the members of the board of the Belarusian Olympic Committee. It does not affect the country’s athletes, said IOC base Thomas Bach at a news conference.
He also claimed that Belarus could not host any Olympic events.
Belarus will also not receive money from the IOC, except money for active people who are preparing for the Tokyo Olympics next year and the 2022 Beijing Olympics. This money will then go directly to active people, not through the Olympic Committee from Belarus. The IOC also calls on international sports federations to ensure that Belarusian athletes can participate in the Olympic qualifiers without political discrimination.
According to the BSSF, athletes have been arrested and detained in connection with demonstrations against the regime after last fall’s elections. Those who received ten days in prison include athlete Andrei Kravchenko, an Olympic silver medalist in the Beijing decathlon in 2008, and basketball player Jelena Leutjenka.
In May Belarus is hosting the World Cup of hockey alongside Latvia, and criticism of Belarus being one of the host countries has been strong.
– It is clear that such a message from the IOC gives a clear focus on how the whole world of sport views a World Cup and therefore naturally puts the issue more in focus for the IIHF (International Hockey Federation), says the President of the Swedish Ice Hockey Federation, Anders Larsson, to DN after the news about IOC Actions against Belarus.
On Friday, the IIHF has a meeting with the national federations where, among other things, the theme of the World Cup will be discussed.
– At the meeting we will undoubtedly get more information about what will happen next, what steps have been taken and what the way forward looks like.
The IOC also announced various measures to shrink the Olympics and equalize the competitions. The number of athletes will be reduced in Paris in 2024 to 10,500. Ten medal disciplines are removed from the existing Olympic program and none of the 41 new ones that have been proposed have been approved.
However, the Paris Olympics will see a whole new sport on the program in the form of breakdancing. Three new sports are already being added to Tokyo: surfing, climbing, and skateboarding.
With the new sports, the IOC says it wants to attract a younger audience.
The reduction affects lifting weights more difficult. Here, the number of participants has been reduced from 196 in Tokyo to 120 in Paris. The move can be seen as a punishment for corruption problems in the International Weightlifting Federation (IWF).
The IOC also announced that the games in Paris will be the same as half of the active will be women.
According to Thomas Bach, the measures are in line with the Agenda 2020 reform program.
