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≡ WORLD FRIENDSHIP GAMES ≡
“In order to protect the right of athletes and sports organizations to free access to international sports activities, I hereby decree to postpone the holding of the World Friendship Games international competition until further instructions from the President of the Russian Federation.”
That’s from Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday (2nd), sending the World Friendship Games into oblivion for now.
Putin ordered the creation of the event in October of 2023, to have 5,500 athletes and a prize pool of 4.6 billion rubles (about $43.2 million U.S. today), and held from 15-29 September this year, a month after the close of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The International Olympic Committee attacked the event bitterly, issuing a March statement that included:
“The IOC notes that, contrary to the Fundamental Principles of the Olympic Charter and the resolutions by the UN General Assembly, the Russian government intends to organise purely politically motivated sports events in Russia. The Russian government created and funded the ‘International Friendship Association’ (IFA), in order to host the summer and winter ‘Friendship Games.’
“Apparently, the first edition of the ‘Summer Friendship Games’ is planned to be held in Moscow and Ekaterinburg, Russia, in September 2024, and the ‘Winter Friendship Games’ in Sochi, Russia, in 2026.
“For this purpose, the Russian government has launched a very intensive diplomatic offensive by having government delegations and ambassadors, as well as ministerial and other governmental authorities, approaching governments around the world. To make their purely political motivation even more obvious, they are deliberately circumventing the sports organisations in their target countries. This is a blatant violation of the Olympic Charter and an infringement of the various UN resolutions at the same time.
“It is a cynical attempt by the Russian Federation to politicise sport. The IOC Athletes’ Commission, representing all the Olympic athletes of the world, clearly opposes using athletes for political propaganda. The Commission even sees the risk of athletes being forced by their governments into participating in such a fully politicised sports event, thereby being exploited as part of a political propaganda campaign.”
Whispers of a delay became known in mid-July, ahead of the Paris 2024 opening, and it became clear on 10 August – when IOC chief Thomas Bach (GER) announced he would end his presidency in 2025 and called for elections next March – that the World Friendship Games were not needed.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov noted Monday that concerns over being able to attract athletes to the Friendship Games was a concern, saying “The event must be competitive. If there is no list of participants, then there is no competition.”
But Peskov also said that Russia remains interested in creating an alternative to the existing sports competition structure:
“They talked about the need to provide professional athletes with a set of international competitions. It doesn’t always work out in terms of composition; we are only at the beginning of this path. At the beginning of the path to creating an alternative competition system.”
Russia is now on a charm offensive, signaled by sports minister Mikhail Degtyarev on 18 November, who told a conference in Moscow that despite Russian isolation in sport, discussions are continuing:
“The dialogue is being conducted, non-publicly, through various channels and on neutral territories.
“I meet with international officials, there are various means of communication. The convergence of positions has begun. I believe that we need to stop with accusations, insults, we need to start moving towards softening the IOC’s position towards our athletes.”
Degtyarev will be elected as the President of the Russian Olympic Committee on 13 December, running unopposed.
All of this is pointed at the IOC Session in Greece in March 2025, where a new IOC President will be elected. Russia politicians and officials have spoken with some optimism about candidates David Lappartient (FRA), head of the Union Cycliste Internationale, Japan’s Morinari Watanabe, head of the Federation Internationale de Gymnastique, and long-time member Juan Antonio Samaranch, whose father was a transformational IOC President from 1980-2001.
Russian hopes that Britain’s Sebastian Coe, head of World Athletics, is not elected; he has been steadfast in saying that if Russian wants to be readmitted to international athletics competitions, it needs to leave Ukraine.
Fewer comments have been made about candidates Feisal Al Hussein (JOR), Olympic champion swimmer Kirsty Coventry (ZIM), or International Ski & Snowboard Federation chief Johan Eliasch (GBR).
According to the Russian news agency TASS:
“Putin also ordered the government to introduce legal amendments that would make it possible to forward the profits from Russia’s gambling industry to a fund that would provide additional support to youth and mass sports, sports schools, the Olympic and Paralympic Committees of Russia, national and regional sports federation, organizing and holding new competitions and events, as well as developing sports infrastructure.”
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