The Friendship Games, the major sporting event desired by Russia, will not be held this year

Athletes from nearly 70 countries around the world competing in 36 sports – Olympic and non-Olympic –, more than 7,000 volunteers and 21 competition venues spread across two cities, Moscow and Yekaterinburg, in the Ural region. The Friendship Games were intended to be “a new chapter in the history of sport”They were, above all, a way for Russia to return to the centre of the game, after its banishment following the invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

But the meeting, initially scheduled for September 15-29, will not take place. At least not this year. The reason? The International Friendship Association, responsible for its organization, invoked, in a press release published on July 30, “the lack of recovery time for top-level athletes who will participate in major international competitions during the summer of 2024”. At the Olympic Games, in this case, it was about competing, without ever saying so explicitly.

The announcement came as the world’s eyes were on Paris, where the global sporting festival had just begun without a Russian representative – or almost, when there were around 330 in Tokyo in 2021. In doubt, the drastic conditions imposed on them by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), while the war continues: no parade at the opening and closing ceremonies, participation under the “neutral individual athlete” flag, no flag, no anthem and a ban on wearing equipment in national colours – the teams were automatically excluded.

The athletes in question were also not supposed to have supported the offensive in Ukraine, nor be linked to the military or be part of a national security agency. Belarus, an ally of Moscow, suffered the same fate.

The memory of 1984

Unthinkable for some. That is why several Russian federations, including judo and wrestling, have given up on allowing their competitors to travel to France. In the end, only fifteen “neutral” athletes from the country were at the Olympics, with a poor record: a second place, at the end of the women’s doubles tennis tournament. Far from the usual standards of Russia, fifth in the medal table in Japan, in 2021, with 71 awards, including 20 gold.

The postponement of the Friendship Games appears, in some respects, to be a victory for the IOC, which had not hidden its hostility towards the project. “None of us should participate in any way in so-called sporting events for political purposes”said its president, Thomas Bach, addressing the Olympic movement during the Forum of International Federations, in Lausanne (Switzerland), in November 2023.

Another Kremlin-backed initiative, the BRICS Games, organised in Kazan, Russia, from 12 to 24 June, had already had a more than mixed outcome: only 82 delegations out of the 90 announced had taken part in the event in the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, including some representing unrecognised territories such as the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, occupied by Russia. Above all, the uneven level of competitors was felt throughout the events, with the hosts sometimes finding themselves alone on the podium due to a lack of competitive opponents.

It is enough to revive memories of 1984, when, in the midst of the Cold War, the Soviet Union and eight of its communist allies – having renounced the Los Angeles Games – held their own multi-sport event, now called the Friendship Games. Forty-nine nations were present, but only those that had boycotted the Californian Games had presented their best athletes, while the others sent reserve teams.

In its press release of July 30, the International Friendship Association argued that the postponement of the meeting “It will allow us to establish a more representative list of participants”. Otherwise, this “new chapter” desired by Moscow will once again clash with the principle of credibility.