Ivan Zaplin (left) and Ivan Kodlozerow trained on the Paralympic trails in Zhangjiakou on Wednesday morning. Shortly therefollowing, their Russian team was expelled.
Photo: imago images / Gavriil Grigorov
It must have been a short night for many sports officials in the Paralympic Villages. Video calls, writing protest letters, threatening boycotts. On Thursday, the International Paralympic Committee gave in to pressure and banned athletes from Russia and Belarus from the Winter Paralympics in Beijing. The day before, the IPC wanted to let those athletes start under a neutral flag outside of the medal classification. The games start this Friday but without them.
IPC President Andrew Parsons suggested that several teams and athletes had threatened a boycott, putting the Paralympics in jeopardy. The situation in the athletes’ villages had escalated and “ensuring the safety of the athletes had become untenable,” it said. In addition, some governments have put pressure on their athletes. Media in numerous countries criticized the IPC’s initial decision, which fell short of a recommendation from the International Olympic Committee. The IOC had advised all associations to exclude athletes from Russia and Belarus. The reversal that followed on Thursday was once more described by Russia’s Sports Minister Oleg Matyzin as illegal and announced a lawsuit before the International Court of Arbitration for Sports.
Friedhelm Julius Beucher, President of the German Disabled Sports Association DBS, described the past few days as a roller coaster of emotions. Beucher and Karl Quade, Chef de Mission of the German team in Beijing, had also tried to influence the IPC’s executive committee with talks and “position papers”. A boycott of the German athletes was not discussed, said Quade in a press conference. It has never happened so often that an association reverses such a decision so quickly. But: “The IPC has found its way back into the international sports world.” Last week, German team members swapped accommodations with the Ukrainian delegation. Otherwise, the Ukrainians would have lived next door to the Russian team.
The German Disabled Sports Association has long expressed its solidarity with the National Paralympic Committee of Ukraine, especially with its President Valeri Suskevich. This partnership intensified in 2014 when the Olympics were followed by the Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. At that time Vladimir Putin had Crimea annexed. Suskevich, a longtime member of Ukraine’s parliament, was one of the few politicians to take an anti-Putin stance on Russian soil. The Ukrainian athletes started in Sochi and were internationally celebrated as heroes.
It should look similar in the coming days. At a press conference in Beijing, Suskevich described his team’s participation as a miracle: »The easiest way for us would have been not to go to the Paralympics. But for us it is a matter of principle to be here. It is a symbol that shows that Ukraine is alive.« Many of the 20 Ukrainian athletes narrowly escaped the bombs during the Russian invasion, Suskevich said. Others might only get to the nearest airport following long car journeys. He himself slept on the floor of a bus for days. “Our presence in Beijing is a sign that Ukraine was, is and will remain a country.”
Valeri Suskewitsch has led the Ukrainian parasportsmen to the top international level. At the Winter Games in Pyeongchang in 2018 and last summer in Tokyo, they each took sixth place in the medal table. Suskevich, who has been confined to a wheelchair since childhood, has often encountered resistance. As a teenager he had started swimming. His father drove him to the sea and pushed him into the water. Later Suskevich was not allowed in the swimming pool, the lifeguards wanted to send him to the hospital. A symbol of the exclusion of disabled people in the Soviet Union. But Suskewitsch remained stubborn, became Soviet champion in paraswimming.
Later, as a politician and official, he promoted sports for disabled people in Ukrainian schools and hospitals. He collected money for barrier-free sports facilities, but the war set him back years. The Ukrainian parasportsmen had to give up their sports center in Yevpatoria in Crimea following the Russian invasion. These are experiences that have shaped Valeri Suskevich. At the press conference in Beijing he said: »There are two fronts at the moment. One is in Ukraine for our soldiers. And the other is here in Beijing.«