It took just eight days, and a war, for the International Olympic Committee to pull off an audacious mid-air manoeuvre that would not have been out of place on the slopes of the Winter Olympics. For much of February, as Beijing hosted the 2022 Games, the IOC was insistent: there is no place for politics in sport. “With regards to the Uyghur population, the position of the IOC must be to give political neutrality,” said the president, Thomas Bach, in early February.
Yet just a week after the curtain fell on the Winter Olympics, the IOC radically backflipped. “In order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants,” the IOC executive board resolved on Monday, Russian and Belarusian athletes should be excluded from international competition. “The IOC reaffirms the call of the IOC president,” the statement continued. “Give peace a chance.”
