Belarus NOC Athletes' Commission appeals to Kirsty Coventry

The Athletes' Commission of the National Olympic Committee (NOC) of Belarushas raised a question with Kirsty Coventry regarding the exclusion of Belarusian athletes from qualifying for the upcoming Winter Games.

On 22 October Chairman of the Belarus NOC Athletes' Commission Aliaksandr Bahdanovich and his deputy Siarhei Rutenka participated in a video conference with the IOC Athletes' Commission, IOC President Kirsty Coventry, and representatives of other national commissions.

During the online meeting, Belarus posed the following question to Kirsty Coventry concerning yesterday's FIS decision and the approach of other winter sports federations:

“Having taken note of the IOC statement on the rejection of visas for the Israeli delegation for the upcoming Artistic Gymnastics World Championships by the government of Indonesia from 17 October, all Belarusian athletes express their full support for the principles it upholds, namely non-discrimination, autonomy, and political neutrality.

We earnestly hope that the International Olympic Committee will be just as resolute and consistent in protecting the rights of all athletes, regardless of their nationality. This raises the question: will the IOC take any action regarding the winter sports international federations, including yesterday's FIS decision, which effectively bars Belarusian athletes, even in a neutral status, from tournaments constituting the winter Olympic qualification for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games?

The IOC president welcomed the Belarusian delegation, thanked them for the question, and commented on the situation as follows:

“It is our job and our responsibility to ensure that we have all athletes competing at the Olympic Games and that no athlete should be held responsible for political views.
Now, that is very easy for me to say, and sometimes harder, and I'm being very honest with all of you, harder to implement, because we have a lot of partners todiscuss all of these things as hard as they may be, and sometimes we have to be very patient, but we will always try to get the end result that we believe we should have. Our responsibility is to ensure that the partners are abiding by the Olympic Charter. And we have to ensure that there is consistency when we take decisions, which we will be implementing. And I am aware of the FIS conversations yesterday.I'm waiting to get a full update and brief from the chair or the president of FIS and to fully understand the discussions that they had, and I can't really comment further on that until I have that formal briefing from them.We can always come back to youonce we have the full understanding of what exactly took place yesterday during their board meeting. Unfortunately, I don't have that information in front of me, so I don't want to speak out of turn and not give you the correct information.”