The search for balance in an always unfair scenario

Just as many human beings run around uselessly trying to achieve that unattainable so-called certainty, many journalists are convinced that things happen according to our criteria: everything happens for only one reason, which is ours.

In this way, we squander the possibility of growing through doubt. The passage of time teaches us that nothing brings us closer to the truth than questions; not necessarily those that are asked in an interview but those that provoke us to reflect.

In a scenario that combines ratifications and reformulations, the IOC has just once again brought to the surface the possibility that Russian and Belarusian athletes can compete in Paris 2024 as well as maintaining solidarity cooperation with Ukrainian athletes who are economically, physically and emotionally affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The details of the statement can be found in the detailed publication made by Around the Rings days ago. In this way, I invite you to ask us questions. We will hardly reach a verdict, but we will surely be a little fairer in our analysis, always understanding that there are few things less just than the invasion of one country to another; than the war itself.

Next, I want to share just a few questions that arise from history and from the present about the link between Olympism (sports in general) and politics, something that has already been posed as a marriage that has often been in conflict while, if not inevitable, absolutely real. Just a few questions out of the many that will surely come to your mind. And they’re all respectable. Questions and answers.

Is it fair that an entire generation of athletes from a given country are banned from all types of competition because of the conduct of a government with which we don’t even know if they agree?

On the other hand, Is it fair for Ukrainian athletes to face colleagues as if nothing had happened to colleagues who, perfectly, can symbolize the image of an army that bombards the land from which they come on a daily basis?

How much can it distort the ideal of healthy competition within the rules that athletes from countries in such conflict face, for example, in contact sports?

In the timeline of the relationship between sports and politics, how many times have there been situations similar to those that Ukrainian lands are going through today? What were the behaviors of the sports leaders in this regard? Just mentioning the scant consequences of the boycotts of Moscow 80 and Los Angeles 84 makes it clear that, beyond being embarrassed by a certain type of passivity, at all times, if anything costs sports in the face of conflict episodes, it is finding the exact measure of justice.

Read by conflicting not just a war episode. Without going any further, it is difficult to equalize the decisions that have been taken with respect to doping systems: some, categorical and eternal. Others, much more contemplative. Here, too, some flags weigh differently. (Could it be that, perhaps, not even the good ones are only on one side and the bad ones only on the other?)

As part of the enormous challenge that Olympism faces, the path to which all those who are sportingly qualified to do so can compete in Paris, regardless of nationality and what their leaders do, it is worth displacing for a moment the anger and pain caused by the conflict on Ukrainian soil and thinking if, finally, we will not be faced with the decision closest to balance, which is so difficult to find in times of war.