\n
\nGENEVA: Russian athletes who do not endorse their country\u2019s war in Ukraine could be accepted back into international sports, IOC president Thomas Bach said in an interview published Friday.
\u201cIt\u2019s about having athletes with a Russian passport who do not support the war back in competition,\u201d Bach told Italian daily Corriere della Sera, adding, \u201cWe have to think about the future.\u201d
Most sports followed International Olympic Committee advice in February and banned Russian team and athletes from their events within days of the country\u2019s military invasion of Ukraine.
With Russians starting to miss events that feed into qualifying for the 2024 Paris Olympics, an exile extending into next year could effectively become a wider ban from those Games.
In an interview in Rome, Bach hinted at IOC thinking after recent rounds of calls with Olympic stakeholders asked for views on Russia\u2019s pathway back from pariah status.
\u201cTo be clear, it is not about necessarily having Russia back,\u201d he said. \u201cOn the other hand \u2014 and here comes our dilemma \u2014 this war has not been started by the Russian athletes.\u201d
Bach did not suggest how athletes could express opposition to the war when dissent and criticism of the Russian military risks jail sentences of several years.
Some Russian athletes publicly supported the war in March and are serving bans imposed by their sport\u2019s governing body.
Olympic gold medalist swimmer Evgeny Rylov appeared at a pro-war rally attended by Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Gymnast Ivan Kuliak displayed a pro-military \u201cZ\u201d symbol on his uniform at an international event.
Russian former international athletes are being called up for military service in the current mobilization, according to media reports. They include former heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuev and soccer player Diniyar Bilyaletdinov.
Russians have continued to compete during the war as individuals in tennis and cycling, without national symbols such as flags and anthems, even when teams have been banned.
In athletics, Russians have competed since 2015 only as neutrals approved by the sport\u2019s governing body because of the state-backed doping scandal which tainted the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
Bach and the IOC faced criticism in fallout from the scandal for not being strict enough with Russian athletes who competed at each Olympics since 2016 with extra vetting of their drug testing or as neutrals without their national team name, flag and anthem.
Bach told Corriere della Sera it was the IOC\u2019s mission to be politically neutral and \u201cto have the Olympic Games, and to have sport in general, as something that still unifies people and humanity.\u201d
\u201cFor all these reasons, we are in a real dilemma at this moment with regard to the Russian invasion in Ukraine,\u201d he suggested.
\u201cWe also have to see, and to study, to monitor, how and when we can come back to accomplish our mission to have everybody back again, under which format whatsoever.\u201d
Bach was in Rome also for a sports forum hosted by the Vatican, where Pope Francis praised sports as \u201can educational and social good and it must remain so.\u201d
\u201cWe should be committed to giving everyone the opportunity to play sports,\u201d the pope said, \u201cto cultivate \u2014 one could say to be \u2018trained\u2019 in \u2014 the values of sport and transform them into virtues.\u201d
Vatican officials previously have said they would like to one day field a team recognized by the IOC in the Olympics.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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