One year into Russia's war on Ukraine, and with a year or more until the Paris Olympics, the globe's athletes will find themselves increasingly in the political spotlight as governments in Europe and English-speaking nations apply mounting pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
A statement signed this week by the sports ministers of 35 nations, including Australia, urges the IOC to shelve plans designed to find a way for athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete in Paris as "neutrals", since the nations themselves have already been sanctioned by the Olympic body.
The statement came almost two weeks after a summit attended by the ministers heard an address from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"While Russia kills and terrorises, representatives of the terrorist state have no place at sports and Olympic competitions," Zelenskyy said.
"And it cannot be covered up with some pretended neutrality or a white flag, because Russia is now a country that stains everything with blood — even the white flag."
While there was no ultimatum included in the statement, Olympic officials are cautious given Zelenskyy has previously suggested he would consider boycotting the games in Paris if athletes from the country he is fighting a war against are allowed to compete.
History of Olympic boycotts
Olympic boycotts have never ended a war.
One senior IOC member has warned any repeat of the Cold War-era boycott that impacted the 1980 and 1984 Olympics in Moscow and Los Angeles could destroy the Olympic movement altogether.
That sounds sensationalist, but those who lived through those years in Australia remember a country divided, where lifelong friendships were torn apart, teenage athletes were described in headlines and news reports as traitors, and Australian Olympic officials who voted in a split decision to go to Moscow — against the government's wishes — received death threats.
It was a similar story in the UK, from where the current push for the Olympic movement to choose sides is emanating.
Back then, the USA led a boycott of the Moscow 1980 games after the Soviet Union's invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviets, in turn, led a boycott four years later when the Games were held in the USA.
"If there was a significant boycott of Paris [2024] there would be countries that would side with … Russia," Australian IOC member John Coates told The Ticket when asked if comparisons could be made between the 1980s and the present day.
"And then they will do the tit for tat we saw four years later in Los Angeles and then it would blow the Olympic movement apart forever."
Forty-three years ago, it was believed a boycott would pressure Russia's withdrawal from Afghanistan. The war raged on for 10 years.
The boycott's biggest impact was felt by the athletes, including current IOC president Thomas Bach, who was unable to defend his gold medal in team fencing since West Germany was one of the boycotting nations.
Zelenskyy was only two years old at the time of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. Australian Sports Minister Anika Wells was not yet born.
Australia's prime minister at the time, Malcolm Fraser, agreed to support a boycott of the games called by then-US president Jimmy Carter, but the Australian Olympic Federation — as the committee was then known — voted 6-5 to attend the Moscow Games against the wishes of the government.
Former IOC member Phil Coles, who passed away last month, was the Australian team's chef de mission in Moscow, where Australian athletes marched into the opening ceremony under the Olympic flag.
"Phil was the face of the team and received massive abuse," Coates said.
"[There were] death threats, and things sent to him in the post, but he stayed very firm.
"Our belief was whether we went or not wasn't going to stop what was happening with the invasion of Afghanistan."
Years later, Mr Fraser admitted the government's stance was wrong.
"Even though I argued strongly for it — it was government policy — it was not good policy," he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2008.
"It was extremely divisive between sports and, within sports, placed an unreasonable burden on young athletes."
More than four decades later, Coates says there are similarities to the political pressure being put on the Olympic movement today.
"I think the Olympic movement does good," Coates said.
"I think it's good for athletes to be able to compete against each other in friendly competition … but I don't know that we could withstand a boycott."
Ukrainian Olympian says Russian athletes must be more publicly anti-war
It is understandable that not all athletes see the Olympic ideals in the same way.
At the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, as Russian troops gathered on the border, Ukraine's Vladyslav Heraskevych held a hand-painted sign up to the television cameras after completing his run in the skeleton event.
It said "No War in Ukraine". Two weeks later, Russia invaded his country.
"In my opinion, Russian athletes are guilty [through their silence]," Heraskevych told the ABC.
"As I see it, they are brainwashed. They should take responsibility for war in some way."
He says he disagrees with Bach referring to the war as "Putin's war".
"A lot of Russians don't support war, but what we see here is hundreds of thousands of Russians … they are shelling cities and killing Ukrainians. It wasn't Putin who raped kids and raped the women, killing and destroying families. It was Russian people," Heraskevych said.
"I understand that maybe there are some Russian athletes and Russian people and they don't support the war, and are against war, but I don't see it.
"In Russia, a lot of athletes are part of the army."
At the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, the Russian team included 109 athletes from the CSKA Moscow club, which had its roots in the armed forces and was a department of the Russian Defence Military. Fifty others were reported as being Russian military personnel.
According to Heraskevych, it is possible there will be Russian athletes who fight in Ukraine, kill Ukrainians and then return home later to compete in international sport.
"To me, it's not right," he said.
Talking about the Olympics brings mixed emotions for Heraskevych.
He feels some of the statements he hears from officials are hypocritical, but he is grateful for the friendships he made as far back as his first Olympic experience at the 2016 Youth Olympic Games in Lillehammer.
He has stayed in touch with some foreign athletes he met there, which makes him smile. Then he remembers one of his teammates from those Games, a figure skater, who was killed in Ukraine three weeks ago. His smile is gone.
"Now everything is affected by war. Even these bright memories about the Olympics," he said.
And yet he does not support his president's suggestion of a boycott.
"It's important to understand, we [the athletes] don't want to boycott the Olympic Games," Heraskevych said.
"It is not our goal. We want to compete in the Olympic Games. It's a big celebration of sport and we want to be part of this family … but we have a problem, and this problem is war."
There are other wars, too, that not as many people are speaking about.
The war in Yemen continues. Weapons from Australia and the USA are sent to Saudi Arabia as they fight against Houthi rebels.
A civil war in Ethiopia is ongoing and more than 600,000 civilians have reportedly been killed.
If Russians are banned, why do others escape scrutiny?
Arsen Julfalakyan is a three-time Olympian from Armenia. The Greco-Roman wrestler also has a doctorate in international relations and history.
"I know what war looks like very, very well," he told The Ticket.
"Not by TV channels, not by news, not by books. I am in the front line. Right now … 120,000 of my compatriots [have been] totally blockaded by Azerbaijan in Nagorno-Karabakh region for almost 70 days.
"Among them are 30,000 children, no food, no medical products … they are getting no basic products during these 70 days."
As a member of United World Wrestling's governing body, and chair of the athletes' commission, he has given the IOC a list of recommendations, including that any athlete who is guilty of breaking the Olympic charter by supporting war "should quit sport and do politics".
With dozens of wars ongoing, Julfalakyan said if the decision was made to ban Russians or Belarusians, then athletes from the dozens of other ongoing wars would need to be banned too.
"If I don't compete against Azerbaijan or Turkey, if an Iranian will not compete against an Israeli … how can we organise a competition? It will be just a competition of a few countries," he said.
"We should try to use sport to overcome the obstacles … but not use sport as an instrument of punishment. This is very important. Sport must be apart from politics.
"By banning athletes, we don't solve any problem. On the contrary, we make things worse."
The 35 sports ministers' statement said their call to ban Russians and Belarusians had "never been one of discrimination simply on the basis of nationality".
But there is no mention of any other current war and the teams those nations will send to Paris in 2024.
David Wallechinsky, a past president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, says "there were no known calls" for action taken against the athletes of the USA, the UK or Australia after their illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.
The demands to 'pick a side'
Five-time Olympian and IOC member Kirsty Coventry, from Zimbabwe, is touted as a future president of the IOC.
She said, with the state of the world today, the ability for the Olympics to bring all people together is something worth fighting for.
"I think we have to — as the Olympic movement, as IOC members — continue to fight for that, because if we allow for true politics to infiltrate and come in I don't think we will have that anymore," she said.
"I think it's worth giving to the next generation to show just how powerful it can be when we all come together and work together and create something that is about peace and unity."
There are those who say the IOC needs to prove it is on the right side of history.
It believes it is, providing one of the few places in the world where athletes from every nation can stand alongside every other as equals.
But war is not sport. War is about politics. And politics always demands that we pick sides.
