The International Olympic Committee is a corrupt body that continues to make decisions that are in the best interest of its wealthy members and of human rights-abusing authoritarian regimes. The United States and the free world should stop simply going along to get along with the IOC.
The IOC’s latest shameful decision is to block London from hosting qualifying events for new 2024 Olympic sports because of United Kingdom’s position on Russia and Belarus. The U.K. requires Russian and Belarusian athletes to agree not to support Russia’s war in Ukraine in order to compete in the country. Therefore, the IOC chose to punish the U.K.
Who will the IOC not be punishing? Russia and Belarus, of course. Sure, the IOC is not giving the countries a “formal invitation” to the 2024 Olympics, but it will allow all Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete anyway. They may do so under some made-up flag that everyone at the IOC pretends doesn’t stand for Russia or Belarus, but the effect is the same. Russia and Belarus will be at the Olympics, and their athletes will try to win medals and glory that their countries can use as propaganda. The only difference is that they won’t hear their own national anthem on the podium.
This is the same kind of moral depravity that goes into so many of the IOC’s decisions, as President Thomas Bach tries to pretend the organization is non-political. Bach still can’t explain why Taiwan is forced to compete as Chinese Taipei and deprived of its flag and anthem at the Olympics, or why he is so obsessively focused on “not punishing athletes” for the actions of their governments when the IOC banned Afghanistan from the 2000 Olympic Games and South Africa from 1964 to 1992.
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The IOC’s lavish list of privileges and demands for its wealthy members ran Norway out of the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympics, with the committee ultimately settling on Communist China, urging everyone to be “non-political” and not condemn China’s genocide of the Uyghurs during the games. Russia was allowed by the IOC to host the 2014 Winter Olympics and just days later went on to invade Crimea. Whoever fluffs the egos of Bach and other IOC members gets favorable treatment, Taiwan and human rights be damned.
The U.S. and other countries should have boycotted the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and forced the IOC to reckon with its political double standards. There is no need to place the biggest global sports competition in the hands of elitists who suck up to the world’s worst governments, and this is yet another reminder that the IOC’s ridiculous, arbitrary rulings must be dealt with.