Russian athletes deemed ‘neutral’ for Paris Summer Olympic Games

Athletes in Ukraine have been leading the call for a total ban on Russian and Belarusian participation in this year’s Paris Summer Olympic Games. 

Former Ukrainian boxer and heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko has argued that the International Olympic Committee (IOC) should not show leniency.

“Do not do this; otherwise, you will betray the Olympic spirit. A country that tramples on the basic principles of international law cannot be legitimized and supported by the international body of sport,” Klitschko said.

Ukraine’s political leadership has also advocated for a full ban. About two years ago, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, “Many Ukrainian athletes have joined the armed forces to defend our country” and that dozens of them have already died on the battlefield.

Zelenskiy argued that Russia should not be allowed to use sports “to promote its political interests and propaganda.” Dozens of other countries have joined Ukraine’s call for a full ban on Russian and Belarusian athletes.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, however, has pushed back. 

Last December, Putin said that sports are supposed to unite people, not divide them.

“Everything that international officials are doing with Russian sports goes completely against the Olympic ideal,” he said.

But Jens Sejer Andersen, founder of “Play the Game,” a Danish initiative that aims to raise ethical standards in sports, said it’s not simple, especially regarding Russia.

“The question of Russian participation in the Olympics has been around for a while because of the revelations of how the Russian state and the Russian sports system had cheated with the international anti-doping system,” Andersen said.

Following the 2014 Winter Olympics, Russia was accused of running a state-sponsored doping program. As the evidence piled up, many Russian athletes were stripped of their medals. 

In the 2018 Olympic games, the IOC implemented new restrictions. 

“The Russian national anthem could not be played, the Russian flag could not be shown, but the athletes were still under the Russian Olympic Committee officially,” Andersen said.

But since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the IOC’s policies have shifted.

For the Paris Games, the Russian Olympic Committee has been banned. Russia will not participate in any team sports. Track and field athletes are also banned. The only Russian and Belarusian athletes who will be allowed to compete are those deemed “neutral” by an IOC review panel.

“These athletes must not have shown any sympathy for the war, they cannot have any relations to the military and they must be ready to appear as neutral athletes,” Andersen explained.

Those granted neutral status will appear under a neutral flag, and if they make it to the podium, their national anthem will not be played.

Currently, 36 Russian and 28 Belarusian athletes have been granted “neutral” status.

One of them is Russian cyclist Tamara Dronova.

“Going to the Olympics is a dream for any kid who gets into sports,” Dronova told The World.

Dronova is from Krasnozavodsk, a small town about 70 miles outside Moscow where a single mother raised her. When she was young, she watched the Olympics on television and said that the athletes seemed like superheroes and wanted to be like them.

“My mom always tried to give me as much as possible. She sacrificed to provide for me and encouraged me to try everything. Every sport and every activity,” Dronova said. 

Dronova’s first sport was cross country skiing. Later, at 15, she got into cycling. Despite the late start, she was a natural.

She went on to win national championships and later participated in international competitions. Cycling became her career. 

“Since I’m from a small town and a simple family, I used to think that making a career in sport was impossible and that making the Olympics was something unachievable,” Dronova said. “I thought that your parents had to be famous or that you had to be someone special.”

Despite her doubts, Dronova made it to the Tokyo Olympics three years ago.

And soon, she’ll be competing in Paris as a neutral athlete.

“At the moment, the situation is such that I have neutral status. It is what it is,” she said, adding that she’s an athlete, not a politician, and that the IOC didn’t directly ask her any questions about her political views.

“The original purpose of the Olympics was to unite people, to allow us to forget about problems, any differences in worldview, religion, race, or nationality, everything,” Dronova said. “It was about focusing on competition in sport and not anything else.”

But Keith Rathbone, senior lecturer of modern European history and sports history at Macquarie University in Sydney, said that sports are “inherently political, and you can’t extract them from that.”

Because of the Kremlin’s authoritarian political system, Rathbone said, all Russian athletes feel they need to fall into line.

“They’re all agents of the Russian state to some extent because the Russian state doesn’t allow them to be completely neutral, free and open,” he said. “And if they did, we would know because there would be athletes going, ‘Stop the war. This is madness. Why are we doing this?’ The fact that none of them are saying that it tells you everything you need to know. That they don’t feel free to say that.”

Because of this, Russian athletes like Dronova, who are deemed neutral, are caught in a difficult position. If they say or do wrong, they can get in trouble with Russian authorities or lose their neutral status with the IOC.

The World asked Dronova what it would mean to her if she won a medal at the Summer Games and found herself on a podium where the Russian national anthem was not played.

“It does mean something to me,” she said. “And in that case, I remember the anthem by heart.”