7/6/21
Among the blur of national anthems at this year’s Olympics, spectators in Tokyo and viewers around the world can expect to hear Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1. At the top of the podium, victorious Russian athletes won’t stand under their flag or hear their national anthem — which have been banned from top global sports competitions since Russia was caught in a systematic doping scandal in 2015. They’ve settled for Tchaikovsky. On Tuesday, the Russian Olympic Committee published its final list of 335 athletes bound for Tokyo. The group is not competing under the banner of “Russia” but as “ROC” — the Russian Olympic Committee — and even that full name can’t be displayed. The Committee flag — three flames flying above Olympic rings — is to be flown and displayed in lieu of the Russian Flag. After a 2015 World Anti-Doping Agency-commissioned report found evidence of institutionalized doping and manipulation of lab data, Russia was banned for four years from using its name, flag and anthem at world sports championships, including the Olympics. In December, the Court of Arbitration for Sport halved that original ban. The package of sanctions were the “strongest set of consequences” ever imposed for doping-related offenses, according to WADA. But some Olympic leaders see the punishments as being overly light.
Philip D’Agati, a scholar of sports in international relations, knows that power plays in athletics have often been a political statement. Sports provide an opportunity to “project power and project greatness,” he told The Washington Post. In the early and mid-20th century, the idea was that if your system could invest in physical fitness, sports and athleticism, it meant that your political and economic system was stable and healthy. Times have changed, but Russia continues to take the Olympics seriously. This year, however, a shadow will continue to loom over Russia’s Olympic presence, D’Agati said: the embarrassment of having been caught cheating. And any points scored or world records set by a Russian athlete will not be scored as a Russian win — at least per official records. The games could nonetheless provide possibilities for Russia to burnish its image. “Domestic politics is a mess,” Sufian Zhemukhov, a scholar of post-Soviet politics, told The Post. Between the poisoning of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, protests, the pandemic, distrust of local vaccines and conflict with Ukraine, it would be “really, really great” for the Kremlin “to have a distraction,” he said.
