Brussels – European Commissioner for Intergenerational Equity, Youth, Culture and Sport Glenn Micalleff will not attend the opening ceremony of the 13th Winter Paralympic Games in Milan-Cortina, scheduled for 6 March at the Arena di Verona. The decision by Brussels—announced this morning (18 February) by the Commissioner himself on X—is linked to the International Paralympic Committee’s (IPC) decision to allow a limited number of Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete under their country’s flag.
According to a statement made yesterday (17 February) by a Committee spokesperson, six Russian athletes competing in alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, and snowboarding, and four Belarusian athletes specialising in cross-country skiing, will benefit from this treatment. “They will be treated like all other athletes in the competition,” the spokesperson added.
According to Micalleff, the IPC’s decision is “unacceptable” because “while Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine continues, it is not possible to support the reinstatement of national symbols, flags, anthems, and uniforms.” “These are elements that cannot be separated from the conflict,” the commissioner continued. These words echo what Ukrainian Sports Minister Matvii Bidnyi said yesterday, that “the International Paralympic Committee’s decision to allow murderers and their accomplices to compete under their national flag is both disappointing and outrageous.”
European Commissioner Glen Micallef [Source: European Commission Audiovisual Service]
What is certain is that the IPC’s decision marks a radical departure from the decision made at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022, when it was decreed that all Olympic and Paralympic athletes from Russia and Belarus would be excluded from international competitions. In fact, this measure had already been relaxed for the 2024 Paris Games and the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics currently underway (those who do not actively support the invasion and have no ties to the military or national security agencies of Russia and Belarus have been allowed to compete as “neutral individual athletes“), but never had such a broad concession been made as to allow them to compete under the official flags of the two aggressor countries.
The IPC had already signalled its intention to do so in September last year, when it announced its willingness to suspend this partial exclusion measure. This was followed in December by a ruling from the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Lausanne, which declared the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) decision to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes from qualifying competitions for the Games unlawful. It was precisely on the basis of this ruling that the IPC justified its decision to grant a sort of “wild card” to those professionals “whom the FIS did not allow to compete to qualify for the Paralympics.”
“Sport unites when it is based on principles. It divides when it sacrifices them,” concluded Commissioner Micalleff. True words, but it is worth noting that the Maltese politician did not utter in recent days when an investigation by the magazine lavocelibera revealed that two of the athletes on the Israeli bobsleigh team were members of the Israeli army during military operations in Gaza following the Hamas pogroms of 7 October 2023.
The obvious inconsistency of the International Olympic Committee was denounced in a clip that went viral by Swiss public television commentator Stefan Renna, who explained live on air: “Edelman (one of the two athletes, ed.) describes himself as “a Zionist to the core” and has posted several messages in favour of the genocide in Gaza. This raises questions about his presence at the Cortina Games, given that the IOC had decided that athletes who, and I quote, “actively supported the war by participating in pro-war demonstrations, or by being involved militarily or through their social activities, were not eligible to participate’.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
