Russia holds its BRICS Games just before the Olympics | Olympic Games

Since its exclusion from the Olympic family, Russia has redoubled its imagination to shake up the world sporting order.

This is a global event, a Russian product that opens a new page in the history of sport, declared Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernushenko to the press when announcing the creation of this new event.

The BRICS mainly bring together Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to which must be added Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. If initially, the meeting of these great powers revolved around economic and political interests, the idea of ​​major joint sporting meetings arose. This is how the BRICS Games were born on the initiative, of course, of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

It was enough to trigger the ire of the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, who strongly recommended that international federations boycott the event.

None of us should participate in any way in such supposedly politically motivated sporting events, he declared last fall.

Behind the organization of these Games, the guardian of the Olympic Temple sees a direct threat to the survival of his house.

Some want to decide which athletes can compete, and in which competitions. Others want to decide where their competitions can take place. Others still want to organize their own political sporting events. The latter case in particular would mean a government takeover of international sports, and an obsolescence of the Olympic Movement, had launched Thomas Bach.

This threat from the IOC president does not seem to shake the confidence and arrogance of the Russian president who is increasing the organization of major sporting events.

Last February, it was the Games of the Future which brought together 1,400 athletes from all over the world. A first international competition of phygital gamessporting activities mixing the physical and the digital.

Then the BRICS Games will take place less than 50 days from the Paris Games. Another affront to the house of Lausanne will be the Friendship Games which will be organized after the Paralympic Games in Paris, next September in Moscow and Yekaterinburg.

Vladimir Putin pulls out of his hat an old idea dating from the Cold War.

When the Soviet Union boycotted the Los Angeles Games in 1984, Russia decided to organize its own sporting competition by creating the Friendship Games.

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The Russian president and that of the IOCPhoto: Getty Images / Pool

Forty years later, the master of the Kremlin dusts off this idea and thereby denounces the hypocrisy of the IOC which, according to him, benefits financially from athletes.

Attractive scholarships will be offered to participants of the Friendship Games. The total amount of bonuses is estimated at 70 million dollars, enough to attract the greatest athletes on the planet.

And it is not the repeated calls from the IOC which risk capsizing this sporting event, despite the latest from Thomas Bach.

The IOC strongly recommends that those involved in the Olympic Movement and all governments on the planet neither participate in nor support this initiative which was designed to politicize international sport.

The Russian offensive which consists of attacking the International Olympic Committee on all fronts seems serious enough to worry Lausanne.

There is discrimination against our athletes and exclusion from certain international competitionsmentioned the new Russian Minister of Sports, Mikhail Degtyarev, during his first interview at Komsomolskaya Pravda. The conclusion is very simple: we are talking about discrimination for political and national reasons. If this is politics, then admit that we are being expelled for political reasons, then this is political discrimination, betrayal.

Asked about the Games of the future, the BRICS and the Friendship Games, here again the response from the Minister of Sports is directly aimed at the IOC.

I already said it: we are banned and it is uselessinsists Mikhail Degtyarev. We will continue to work, they expect us to slam the door. Besides, they encourage us to do this so that we applaud and say: “it’s probably their fault, since they left.” This does not prevent us from organizing Games with other countries, it is our right. This is not the purview of the International Olympic Committee or anyone else.

New provocation or subliminal message from the Russians, the mascot of the next BRICS Games is a leopard nicknamed Brixik. It alone symbolizes agility, strength, speed and strength of character.

Qualities which strangely resemble Moscow’s strategy and its desire to move quickly to redistribute the cards in world sport.

This new threat from Vladimir Putin strangely resembles a game of chess.

The master of the Kremlin advances his pieces one by one to take control of the sports chessboard.

Who will checkmate the other? The future will tell.