Moses: “Russia should be excluded from the 2024 Paris Olympics for this barbarism”

The American Edwin Moses, president of the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, believed that Russia should be excluded from 2024 Paris Olympics and the following Winter ones due to “the barbarity of what they are doing” in Ukraine, which “has disturbed the entire world”.

“With this war going on, completely out of character, which I think is typical of the way the Russians treat things, I seriously think they should be excluded from Paris. [Juegos Olímpicos del 2024] and probably also in the next Winter Olympics. Something has to happen to him, his behavior is not going to change voluntarily, ”she stated.

In an interview broadcast by Laureus, the former athlete recalled that he was in favor of excluding the Russians for what happened in Sochi in 2014 “for really corrupting the integrity of the Olympic Games, through doping”, when he was part of the Committee Executive of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), because “too many extensions had been made”.

“Intercepting the tests in a laboratory, making a hole in the wall, changing the doping samples, all this during the Olympic Games, destroyed the image I had of the Olympic spirit, and with it the ethics of what the Olympic Games mean. for me. It was just atrocious from the start. I thought the IOC should have cracked down on them right there, for corrupting what the Olympic movement stands for, but they didn’t,” he stated.

Moses, who is a member of the Laureus Academy and president of its Foundation, highlighted the unity currently shown by sports organizations in their stance against Russia, because “the normal thing is that Formula 1 does not withdraw, that FIFA does not expel to Russia, that not all international federations are involved”.

“That’s not normal, but this is so horrible. It doesn’t have much to do with politics, it has to do with humanity, and this war has really violated humanity. This situation in the Ukraine, and the war, and the fighting, and the children dying, the innocent people dying, the rockets and missiles, and the tanks rolling, and it’s live on TV, so the whole world is aware of it and has disturbed the entire world,” he added.

Moses lamented, however, the damage that the sanctions will cause to the Russian people, who “do not know what is happening”, because “there is no information in the country, and it is also subject to” repression “by the regime of Vladimir Putin, with whom he met a long time ago and spoke to him in a “propaganda” tone.

“Once I sat near him. Two seats away, and translator was in the middle. And I talked to him all that night. I know how he talked about sports, as if they were the Holy Grail, and how important sport was, and how good it was that the best of each country, regardless of their ideology, could compete together, and whoever wins, wins. . It was just propaganda!” he considered.

The double Olympic champion in the 400 hurdles in Montreal 1976 and Los Angeles 1984 pointed out that what Russia is doing now in Ukraine “is exactly the same thing that they have done with the sport”, with a system in which all national governing bodies ” they are in collusion, to dope the athletes”.

“That’s what we’re seeing how it works there. There are no penalties for testing positive. If an athlete tests positive, in the course of training, they are simply left off the team that year. There are no sanctions, there is nothing wrong, there is no punishment for it. He just waits another day to get on the team and hopefully tests negative, comes out again and beats the world. This is how he earns. I have known for 35 years. And I’ve been fighting it for thirty-five years,” he concluded.