Paris (AFP) – As nations come together in Paris to celebrate peaceful competition, sports powerhouse Russia will be an Olympic outcast after being shunned over its Ukraine assault and will not even broadcast the Games. For over two decades under Vladimir Putin, Russia has sought to burnish its international prestige through sport, but the 2024 Summer Games will be seen as the lowest point in its Olympic history, with just a tiny squad of 15 neutral athletes representing Moscow. In response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from competing as a team.
The few sportspeople allowed to come cannot wear Russian team colours and will have no anthem. Russian television has no plans to broadcast the Games, which begin on Friday, in the first such blackout since the Soviet Union shunned the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics. "Russia will be reduced to a shadow of itself at the Paris Games," said Jules Boykoff, a US-based academic who studies the Olympics.
"The journey from Olympic powerhouse to pariah has been swift and striking." Ukraine's athletes have been told by their chiefs to avoid Russians in Paris as Moscow presses ahead with its offensive on the battlefield and kills civilians with aerial strikes. Over 450 Ukrainian sportspeople have been killed as a result of the assault.
'Understatement of Olympian proportions' Moscow has been violating the Olympic protocol for years. In 2008, Russia broke the Olympic truce by launching a short but bloody war against Georgia. In 2016, Moscow's massive state-sponsored doping scheme came to light.
According to a whistleblower, it involved agents of the FSB security service helping switch dirty urine samples at the Sochi Winter Games in 2014. As punishment for Russia, its athletes competed in the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, the Tokyo Games in 2021 and the Beijing Winter Olympics in 2022 under a neutral flag. In the absence of the Russian flag, the country's athletes still performed well.
Over 330 athletes from Russia competed in Tokyo, taking home 71 medals including 20 golds. The Beijing Games were barely over when Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the International Olympic Committee's patience finally snapped. Athletes from Russia and its ally Belarus were banned from world sport, but the IOC has said Russian athletes can compete in Paris as long as they do not support the Kremlin's war against Ukraine or have any links to the army.
The Russian athletes will be excluded from the opening ceremony on the Seine. Moscow says such moves are "unprecedented" discrimination and some of the sportspeople cleared by the IOC have turned down the chance to take part in Paris. "To say that the relationship between the International Olympic Committee and Russia has deteriorated is to make an understatement of Olympian proportions," said Boykoff.
- 'Nothing to see' - Just 15 Russians have accepted the invitation, seven of them tennis players including this year's men's Wimbledon semi-finalist Daniil Medvedev and 17-year-old sensation Mirra Andreeva. The other eight will take part in cycling, swimming, canoe and trampoline competitions. Russian wrestlers and judokas will boycott the event.
The Olympics have been a polarizing issue at home. Some sports officials have called the athletes who are going to Paris "traitors" and a "team of bums", while others say they are "heroes." Russia has said it wants to stage an alternative to the Olympics dubbed the Friendship Games, and not a single Russian TV channel said it would broadcast the action from Paris.
The pro-Kremlin tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda said it had conducted a poll showing 87 percent of respondents were not interested in watching anyway. "Without Russia these are not Olympics, so there's nothing to see there," the newspaper quoted one reader as saying. Sports commentator Mikhail Polenov decried the "political" boycott.
"The fact that Russian TV channels will not show the Olympics is a national disaster," he told independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe. Veteran sports commentator Alexander Shmurnov told AFP claims that Russians were not interested in Olympic broadcasts were "lies." "A huge number of people in Russia would love to watch the Olympics," said Shmurnov, who quit state-controlled channel Match TV and left the country after the invasion.
He said he would provide commentary of the Games on his YouTube channel. He said many Russian athletes were "suffering" from growing isolation due to the Kremlin's politics. "A majority of Russian sportspeople are not warriors of the propaganda forces," he said.
Global Rights Compliance, a Hague-based group, says two-thirds of the small group of Russian Olympians have expressed support for the war or had links to the military. But Shmurnov said that, in current circumstances, even a Russian athlete's willingness to show up in Paris was nothing short of a positive "political act". "Sport is the antithesis of war," he said.
"Sport is peace." An overly confident Trump team indulged in a campaign luxury that could prove a critical liability on election night, a new political analysis contends. Former President Donald Trump's campaign is seriously concerned about running mate Sen.
J.D. Vance (R-OH) now that President Joe Biden has opted to step aside from the 2024 election, the Atlantic reported Monday.
"The selection of Ohio Senator J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury," writes staff writer Tim Alberta, "meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nailbiter.
" ALSO READ: ‘Creepy weirdos’: Senator fears Trump WH staff would destroy government from ‘inside’ Trump's supporters were shocked that Biden chose to abide the calls from his own party that he step aside from the election after a disastrous debate performance raised concerns about his age, according to the report. The reasoning was reportedly based on an old ethnic stereotype. "More than anything," Alberta writes, "Trump’s allies believed that the president’s stubborn Irish ego wouldn’t let him back out of a fight with a man he despised.
" Conservative confidence fueled a manic energy at the Republican National Convention where Vance mounted the stage and claimed his party's nomination for vice president, Alberta writes. But Republicans optimistic that their winning streak would run from July through November were met with a brutal check when Biden stepped aside. "In many ways, the convention scene was one of a party peaking too early," writes Alberto.
"With Biden appearing to dig in, they left Milwaukee believing that this run of luck might never end. The president’s abrupt exit dashed any such fantasy." Now Republicans are fretting about the prospect that Vice President Kamala Harris will take the reigns and claim as her running mate someone who can deliver what Vance cannot — undecided voters in powerful swing states, the Atlantic article concludes.
"For a campaign that went to bed Saturday believing it would dictate the terms of the election every day until November 5, Sunday brought an unfamiliar feeling of powerlessness," Alberta writes. "For the first time in a long time, Trump does not control the narrative of 2024." CONTINUE READING Show less Never Trumper George Conway mocked his ex-wife Monday after she hit out at Vice President Kamala Harris on Fox News.
“She does not speak well, she does not work hard, she should not be the standard bearer for the party,” Kellyanne Conway, a Trump adviser, said on Sunday as the network showed video clips of Harris giggling. Her ex, an outspoken Trump opponent, quickly responded on X : “Not everyone can express themselves as eloquently and with such exquisite turns of phrase as Donald J. Trump.
” The Conways split “amicably” and said last year that they were in the final stages of a divorce. The Daily Beast reported that Trump responded, “Congratulations to Kellyanne Conway on her DIVORCE from her wacko husband, Mr. Kellyanne Conway.
Free at last, she has finally gotten rid of the disgusting albatross around her neck.” CONTINUE READING Show less Former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to be vice president Sunday evening, calling a ticket combining Vice President Kamala Harris and the Michigan governor “the winning hand” for Democrats after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign Sunday afternoon.
“The heroic, selfless decision by Joe Biden has given us the chance to nominate two leaders who will wipe the smirk off Donald Trump’s face and allow us to come roaring back,” de Blasio said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The best way to beat Trump ? Team up @VP Kamala Harris and @GovWhitmer ! The heroic, selfless decision by @JoeBiden has given us the chance to nominate two leaders who will wipe the smirk off Donald Trump’s face and allow us to come roaring back. A Harris-Whitmer ticket is the.
.. — Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) July 22, 2024 De Blasio ran for president during the 2020 cycle and participated in the presidential debates held in Detroit in 2019.
Biden endorsed Harris to be the Democratic nominee for president shortly after ending his own campaign, and Harris has started the process of taking over his existing campaign apparatus. Several Michigan officials quickly endorsed Harris on Sunday, including U.S.
Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing) and Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.), U.
S. Reps. Hillary Scholten (D-Grand Rapids), Debbie Dingell (D-Ann Arbor), Dan Kildee (D-Flint), Shri Thanedar (D-Detroit) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly), Attorney General Dana Nessel and former governors Jim Blanchard and Jennifer Granholm.
Granholm also serves as Biden’s energy secretary. Another member of Biden’s cabinet, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who lives in Traverse City, also quickly endorsed Harris. Buttigieg is among the names who have been floated as a potential replacement for Biden or running mate for Harris, along with California Gov.
Gavin Newsom, who also endorsed Harris on Sunday, and Whitmer. Whitmer did not endorse anyone Sunday but said that her “job in this election will remain the same: doing everything I can to elect Democrats and stop Donald Trump, a convicted felon whose agenda of raising families’ costs, banning abortion nationwide and abusing the power of the White House to settle his own scores is completely wrong for Michigan.” Other officials being floated as potential running mates for Harris include Pennsylvania Gov.
Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Arizona Sen.
Mark Kelly. We need a Harris-Whitmer ticket now! Think of the excitement and energy that would bring! @KamalaHarris and @GovWhitmer : That’s a team we can win with. https://t.
co/Pz2Kc7CqzV — Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) July 22, 2024 While some have indicated they believe Harris may select a male running mate to “balance” the ticket, de Blasio urged delegates to “think of the excitement and energy” a Harris-Whitmer ticket would bring. “We need a Harris-Whitmer ticket now!” de Blasio said. GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUBSCRIBE Michigan Advance is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
Michigan Advance maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Susan J. Demas for questions: info@michiganadvance.
com . Follow Michigan Advance on Facebook and X . CONTINUE READING Show less.
