GENEVA (AP) — The question of if and how Russia competes at the Olympics hangs over the 2024 Paris Summer Games.
Just as it has now for five straight Olympics during Thomas Bach’s leadership of the IOC, whose support this week for some Russians to compete in Paris was publicly challenged Friday by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russia and its athletes have been at risk of being banned — though ultimately competed — at each Olympics since the steroid-tainted 2014 Sochi Winter Games that was Bach’s first as president of the International Olympic Committee.
This time it is Russia waging war on Ukraine. Previously it was Russian state-backed doping and then Russian authorities trying to cover up evidence of that scandal.
Zelenskyy wants Russia excluded from taking part in Paris while its military is occupying and attacking his country. He stressed that this week in talks with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Ukraine’s sports minister first warned on Thursday of boycotting the Olympics. That was after the IOC detailed its preferred pathway to let Russians who have not openly supported the war to qualify for Paris and compete as neutral athletes against Ukrainians.
“It is obvious that any neutral flag of Russian athletes is stained with blood. I invite Mr. Bach to Bakhmut,” Zelenskyy said in a video address, referring to the city in eastern Ukraine wrecked by the war. “So that he could see with his own eyes that neutrality does not exist.”
The IOC was more strident on Russia when the military invasion started within days of the Beijing Winter Games closing ceremony. It was an egregious breach of the United Nations-backed Olympic Truce that is prized by Bach.
Last February, the IOC recommended “with a heavy heart” sports bodies exclude Russia and Belarus from hosting and competing “in order to protect the integrity of global sports competitions and for the safety of all the participants.”
It could not be fair for Russians to continue competing while “many athletes from Ukraine are prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country,” the IOC said last Feb. 28.
Now, 18 months before the Paris opening ceremony and as qualifying ramps up in the 32 sports, the IOC’s revised public stance has provoked anger from Ukraine.
“If we are not heard, I do not rule out the possibility that we will boycott and refuse participation in the Olympics,” Ukrainian sports minister Vadym Guttsait wrote Thursday on his Facebook account.
One of Ukraine’s top medal prospects does not want to share the stage with Russians — even if such a symbol of peaceful tolerance is exactly how the IOC sees its “unifying mission” to bring all 206 national Olympic teams together.
“They died for me, really they don’t exist in my life,” said Yaroslava Mahuchikh, the high jumper whose rivalry from 2019-21 with Russian champion Mariya Lasitskene made theirs a standout event.
Mahuchikh told German broadcaster DW Sports this week that Ukrainian athletes “will do everything that is possible” to keep out athletes from Russia, which she called a “terrorist state.”
In Bach’s home country Germany, the Athleten Deutschland group said Friday many of its members find it “difficult to imagine contesting competitions against Russian athletes under the current conditions.”
“No athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport,” the IOC stressed Wednesday, though this was often not true in Olympic history.
Germany and Japan, the aggressors of World War II, were not invited to the 1948 London Olympics. South Africa was excluded from 1964 through 1988 because of its racist Apartheid laws.
The IOC points instead to the more recent example of Yugoslavians competing at the 1992 Barcelona Games as “independent athletes” while the nation was under UN sanctions during a civil war.
Bach wants to separate athletes from the actions of their government, and has called the situation a dilemma for a stated aim to “always embrace human diversity and never to exclude others.”
That philosophy rankles with Zelenskyy, who can be a compelling advocate for a blanket ban on Russia that was resisted when demanded in the past decade by athletes, the World Anti-Doping Agency or activist groups.
If Russians are allowed to compete, their path to Olympic qualification likely will go through Asia due to Russia’s tense relations with its European neighbors.
Paris is the last of six Olympics for Bach’s presidency before hitting his 12-year term limit in 2025. A presidency that began in September 2013 with an instant congratulatory phone call from President Vladimir Putin has always had a major Russian theme.
After the Sochi laboratory doping scheme was detailed in 2016, Russia sent a limited team — though still nearly 300 athletes — to the Rio Janeiro Games and has been denied its flag and anthem at each Olympics since.
Yet while Russians always were at the Olympics, they were banned entirely from track and field’s world championships last July in Eugene, Oregon.
“The world is horrified by what Russia has done, aided and abetted by Belarus,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said within days of the war starting. “Sport has to step up and join these efforts to end this war and restore peace. We cannot and should not sit this one out.”
Track’s ongoing Russia ban excludes Lasitskene, the three-time defending champion in high jump. Last year she wrote an open letter to Bach, who could not defend his team fencing title at the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the West German boycott after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
“I have no doubts,” she wrote, “that you don’t have the courage and dignity to lift the sanctions against Russian athletes.”
This week, Bach set governing bodies of some Olympic sports on the path to do just that.
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CALGARY – The Calgary Flames have re-signed defenceman Ilya Solovyov and centre Cole Schwindt, the NHL club announced Wednesday.
Solovyov signed a two-year deal which is a two-way contract in year one and a one-way deal in year two and carries an average annual value of US$775,000 at the NHL level.
Schwindt signed a one-year, two-way contract with an average annual value of $800,000 at the NHL level.
The 24-year-old Solovyov, from Mogilev, Belarus, made his NHL debut last season and had three assists in 10 games for the Flames. He also had five goals and 10 assists in 51 games with the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers and added one goal in six Calder Cup playoff games.
Schwindt, from Kitchener, Ont., made his Flames debut last season and appeared in four games with the club.
The 23-year-old also had 14 goals and 22 assists in 66 regular-season games with the Wranglers and added a team-leading four goals, including one game-winning goal, in the playoffs.
Schwindt was selected by Florida in the third round, 81st overall, at the 2019 NHL draft. He came to Calgary in July 2022 along with forward Jonathan Huberdeau and defenceman MacKenzie Weegar in the trade that sent star forward Matthew Tkachuk to the Panthers.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
KING CITY, Ont. – Oman scored 10 runs in the final over to edge Nepal by one wicket with just one ball remaining in ICC Cricket World Cup League 2 play Wednesday.
Kaleemullah, the No. 11 batsman who goes by one name, hit a four with the penultimate ball as Oman finished at 223 for nine. Nepal had scored 220 for nine in its 50 overs.
Kaleemullah and No. 9 batsman Shakeel Ahmed each scored five in the final over off Sompal Kami. They finished with six and 17 runs, respectively.
Opener Latinder Singh led Oman with 41 runs.
Nepal’s Gulsan Jha was named man of the match after scoring 53 runs and recording a career-best five-wicket haul. The 18-year-old slammed five sixes and three-fours in his 35-ball knock, scoring 23 runs in the 46th over alone when he hit six, six, four, two, four and one off Aqib Ilyas.
Captain Rohit Paudel led Nepal with 60 runs.
The 19th-ranked Canadians, who opened the triangular series Monday with a 103-run win over No. 17 Nepal, face No. 16 Oman on Friday, Nepal on Sunday and Oman again on Sept. 26. All the games are at the Maple Leaf Cricket Ground.
The eight World League 2 teams each play 36 one-day internationals spread across nine triangular series through December 2026. The top four sides will go through to a World Cup qualifier that will decide the last four berths in the expanded 14-team Cricket World Cup in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
Canada (5-4) stands second in the World League 2 table. The 14th-ranked Dutch top the table at 6-2.
Oman (2-2 with one no-result) stands sixth, ahead of Nepal (1-5).
Canada won all four matches in its opening tri-series in February-March, sweeping No. 11 Scotland and the 20th-ranked host Emirates. But the Canadians lost four in a row to the 18th-ranked U.S. and host Netherlands in August.
Canada which debuted in the T20 World Cup this summer in the U.S. and West Indies, is looking to get back to the showcase 50-over Cricket World Cup for the first time since 2011 after failing to qualify for the last three editions. The Canadian men also played in the 1979, 2003 and 2007 tournaments, exiting after the group stage in all four tournament appearances.
The Canadian men regained their one-day international status for the first time in almost a decade by finishing in the top four of the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier Playoff in April 2023 in Bermuda.
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This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024
PENTICTON, B.C. – Rick Tocchet has already warned his Vancouver Canucks players — the looming NHL season won’t be easy.
The team made strides last year, the head coach said Wednesday ahead of training camp. The bar has been raised for this year’s campaign.
“To get to the next plateau, there are higher expectations and it’s going to be hard. We know that,” Tocchet said in Penticton, B.C., where the team will open its camp on Thursday.
“So that’s the next level. It starts day one (on Thursday). My thing is don’t waste a rep out there.”
The Canucks finished atop the Pacific Division with a 50-23-9 record last season, then ousted the Nashville Predators from the playoffs in a gritty, six-game first-round series. Vancouver then fell to the Edmonton Oilers in a seven-game second-round set.
Last fall, Jim Rutherford, the Canucks president of hockey operations, said everything would have to go right for the team to make a playoff push. That doesn’t change this season, he said, despite last year’s success.
“The challenges will be greater, certainly. But I believe the team that we started with last year, we have just as good a team to start the season this year and probably better,” he said.
“As long as the team builds off what they did last year, stick to what the coaches tell them, stick to the system, stick together in good times and bad times, this team has a chance to do pretty well.”
Some key players will be missing as Vancouver’s training camp begins, however.
Canucks general manager Patrik Allvin announced Wednesday that star goalie Thatcher Demko will not be on the ice when the team begins it’s pre-season preparation.
Allvin did not disclose the reason for Demko’s absence, but said the 28-year-old American has been making progress.
“He’s been in working extremely hard and he seems to be in a great mindset,” the GM said.
Demko missed several weeks of the regular season and much of Vancouver’s playoff run last spring with a knee injury.
The six-foot-four, 192-pound goalie has a career 213-116-81 regular-season record with a .912 save percentage, a 2.79 goals-against average and eight shutouts across seven seasons with the Canucks.
Allvin also announced that veteran centre Teddy Blueger and defensive prospect Cole McWard will also miss the start of training camp after each had “minor lower-body surgery.”
Vancouver previously announced winger Dakota Joshua won’t be present for the start of camp as he recovers from surgery for testicular cancer.
Tocchet said he’ll have no problem filling the holes, and plans to switch his lines up a lot in Penticton.
“Nothing’s set in stone,” he said. “I think it’s important that you have different puzzles at different times.”
The coach added that he expects standout centre Elias Pettersson to begin on a line with Canucks newcomer Jake DeBrusk.
Vancouver inked DeBrusk, a former Boston Bruins forward, to a seven-year, US$38.5 million deal when the NHL’s free agent market opened on July 1.
The glare on Pettersson is expected to be bright once again as he enters the first year of a new eight-year, $92.8 million contract. The 25-year-old Swede struggled at times last season and put 89 points (34 goals, 55 assists) in 82 games.
Rutherford said he was impressed with how Pettersson looked when he returned to Vancouver ahead of camp.
“He seems to be a guy that’s more relaxed and more comfortable. And for obvious reasons,” said the president of hockey ops. “This is a guy that I believe has worked really hard this summer. He’s done everything he can to play as a top-line player. … The expectation for him is to be one of the top players on our team.”
A number of Canucks hit milestones last season, including Quinn Hughes, who led all NHL defencemen in scoring with 92 points and won the Norris Trophy as the league’s top blue liner.
Several players could once again have career-best years for Vancouver, Tocchet said, but they’ll need to be consistent and not allow frustration to creep in when things go wrong.
“You’ve just got to drive yourself every day when you have a great year,” the coach said. “You’ve got to keep creating that environment where they can achieve those goals, whatever they are. And the main goal is winning. That’s really what it comes down to.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 18, 2024.
