Ivan Zalisko of Ukraine celebrates his bronze-medal win against Islam Aslanovitch Kazharov of Russia in the74-kilogram freestyle division at the U20 world wresting championship August 23 in Bratislava Slovakia.

 

"Athletes can only inspire us if they are able to compete." 

"They can only do so if we keep sport strictly neutral ground, if politics does not take over on the field of play."

IOC president Kirsty Coventry

 

"Any conversation about returning Russian athletes to the international arena can only happen after the war ends, a just peace is established, every single abducted Ukrainian child is returned home, and international law is fully restored."

"Until that moment, isolation is not political -- it is a matter of basic human decency."

Ukraine Sports Minister Matviy Bidnyi

 

"The boycott agenda of the '80s very nearly destroyed the Olympic movement."

"Eventually, the politicians began to understand that maybe it was a good idea for the world to come together through sport."

"Over the last decade, politicians have again turned to using sport as a tool to sanction, declaring who can and who cannot participate."

"I have argued in my book Fast Tracks and Dark Deals, that the biggest single threat facing the future of sport is the growing political weaponization of sport." 

Michael Payne former IOC marketing chief  

According to IOC president Kirsty Coventry, "politics does not take over on the field of play". Ukraine has other ideas. Along with former IOC executives who feel that politics and sport, on the record, remain inseparable. In the Youth Olympics that began Saturday in the Senegalese capital Dakar, Ukrainian and Russian athletes competing against one another may test Coventry's stated direction. Is it not political, after all, when 13 Russian athletes parade with the national flag and their national anthem is played at an Olympic event for the first time in six years? 

 

The Dakar 2026 Youth Olympic Games (YOG) officially opened on Saturday 31 October 2026, marking the first Olympic sporting event ever held on the African continent.  Sport Europe

 

Ukraine has chosen not to boycott sporting events that Russia has competed in, choosing instead to meet their Russian opponents straight on during sport events that see them competing against one another. The idea is to challenge their Russian competitors on the field of sport just as their Ukrainian military counterparts meet their Russian opponents on the field of conflict, knowing that all things being equal their chances of overcoming the adversity that the Russians represent are magnified by their emotional 

response to the violence imposed upon them by a traditional Russian warmonger.

 

There was a hugely successful boycott when the 1975 Montreal Games highlighted a multilateral campaign to isolate apartheid South African from world sport. It was the Canadian Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that brought the matter of South African apartheid to a head, campaigning against that most basic corruption of human rights. The time had long passed when a European country could with impunity occupy another less-economically-developed nation and rule it as they saw fit, declaring he indigenous population inferior and reaping the benefits of natural resources not their own. 

  

Ukrainian Ivan Zalisko became the bronze medalist of the U20 World Cup in freestyle wrestling

 

The ideal of sports bringing countries together as one huge family celebrating athletics and competition whereby those that excel in their techniques, athleticism, performance level and professional expertise to be declared champions, does have expectations that enthusiasm for sport can overcome national hostilities. The very fact that North and South Korea, even while technically at war paraded in unison at the Sydney Games in 2000, fielding a joint ice hockey team at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang was enlightening entertainment, but once the festivities were concluded, the divided states were no closer to peace than previously.

 

FIFA president Gianni Infantino, whose standards are clearly not that of the IOC's Coventry,  stands accused of crossing the line in sport and national neutrality given his personal alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, awarding him the FIFA Peace Prize. "It was a fake award with no public criteria, jury or process. I think that changed the perception of FIFA from working with a political leader to endorsing one. That's not neutrality", observed former IOC marketing executive Terrence Burns. 

 

Perhaps it was that very close relationship with President Trump, and his soft spot for Russia, refusing to condemn Vladimir Putin for invading Ukraine and causing over a million conflict deaths among Russian servicemen alone in the process, that convinced Infantino to open FIFA completely to Russia where it is competing at the under-15 football world cup this month. The ban on the country, he stated. has not "achieved anything, it has just created more frustrations and hatred". 

 

Olga Kharlan won Ukraine's first medal at the Paris Olympics. "It's special because it's for my country. It's for people in Ukraine, it's for defenders [soldiers], it's for athletes who couldn't come here because they were killed by Russia."

"[Globally speaking,] sport has never been separate from politics."

"When I heard anyone use that phrase it sounds naive at best and cynical at worst."

"The real principle is neutrality. The Olympic movement only works if it stays independent of governments."

"Sport opens doors but it can't make anyone walk through them. Still, I think an open door is worth a great deal when every other one is shut." 

"The lesson is that a boycott works when it is sustained, collective, and aimed squarely at the wrongdoer." 

Former International Olympic Committee marketing executive Terrence Burns