Australia's Olympic chief Carroll greenlights Russia, Belarus for 2032 Summer Olympics

Sydney [Australia], March 28 : The National Olympic Committee of Australia (AOC) expressed its readiness to welcome athletes representing Russia and Belarus at the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, AOC Chief Executive Matt Carroll told journalists, Russian News Agency TASS reported.

According to Carroll, Russian and Belarusian athletes "will take part in the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, despite the opposition of the Australian federal government."

"It's not the athletes who started the war, who are causing the grief and the tragedy," Carroll stated. "The AOC's position is that of the International Olympic Committee."

"Sport is the unification of the world. The athletes did not start the conflict, they are not the cause of the situation, so there is an opportunity to unite, not divide the world. You remember the boycott of various countries in 1980."

The 1980 Summer Olympic Games were held in the Russian capital of Moscow between July 19 and August 3. The Summer Olympics in 1980, hosted by then-Soviet Union, were marred by a boycott on behalf of a number of foreign countries, including the United States, in protest of Soviet military presence in Afghstan, TASS reported.

After Tokyo was home to the Olympic flame at the 2020 Summer Games, it will travel to Paris for the Summer Games in 2024, and then to Los Angeles in 2028. In 2021, at the 138th IOC (the International Olympic Committee) session in Tokyo, Australia's Brisbane was selected to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games, TASS reported.

At its session on January 25, 2023, the IOC Executive Board put forward a proposal to permit individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to take part in international sports tournaments, but only under certain conditions. Athletes from the countries in question should not be "actively supporting" Russia's special military operation in Ukraine and must compete under a neutral status.

On February 2, the sports ministers of Lithua, Latvia, Estonia and Poland urged the IOC and International Federations (IFs) to ban athletes representing Russia and Belarus from taking part in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris, TASS reported.

On February 9, Reuters news agency quoted IOC President Thomas Bach as saying in a statement that a possible boycott of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris by the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee (NOC) would be in violation of the Olympic Charter.

On February 28, 2022, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) issued recommendations to international sports federations to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from taking part in international tournaments, citing Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine as the reason, TASS reported.

Following the IOC's recommendations in late February 2022, the majority of global sports federations decided to bar athletes from Russia and Belarus from all international sports tournaments.