Athletes from Russia and Belarus will participate as neutrals in the winter Paralympic Games that will open this Friday in Beijing.
The International Paralympic Committee (IPC), meeting in the Chinese capital, decided to admit their presence under the Paralympic flag and not include their results in the official medal table.
The IPC thus follows the guidelines given by the IOC, which first asked all international federations to cancel their competitions in Russia and Belarus and then urged that their athletes be excluded from international tournaments. When this was not possible, the representatives of both countries had to compete without their national symbols -anthem, flag, uniforms-.
Two days before the inauguration, and with most of the athletes already in Beijing, the IPC has chosen not to send them back home, but to reduce their role in the Games.
The IOC considers that the Russian government has broken the Olympic truce that was approved unanimously in the United Nations on the occasion of the Games, as has Belarus by supporting the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Ukrainian Paralympic Committee has managed to send a team of 20 athletes and nine guides to Beijing, confirmed the IPC, which said their whereabouts were being kept secret for security reasons.
The Ukrainians were sixth at the 2018 Games.
The IPC will convene an extraordinary general assembly this year to decide if the violation of the Olympic truce will be a reason for expulsion from the organization and if, in this specific case, it should proceed to suspend or terminate the permanence of Russia and Belarus.
Russian Paralympians have already participated as neutrals in the 2018 PyeongChang Games due to doping sanctions. They were second in the final table (24 medals) and thus linked four consecutive editions among the first three places in the medal table: first in Turin 2006 and Sochi 2014 and second in Vancouver 2010 and PyeongChang 2018.
Belarus, a team with less potential, was eighth in 2018 with 12 podium finishes. (D)
Source: Eluniverso
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