The Friendship Games, the major sporting event wanted by Russia, will not take place 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 Urals region. The Friendship Games were intended as a “a new chapter in the history of sport”Above all, they were a way for Russia to put itself back at the center of the game, after its ostracization in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 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, cited, in a press release published on July 30, “the lack of recovery time for high-level athletes participating in major international competitions during the summer of 2024”. At the Olympic Games, in this case, which were about competing, without ever explicitly verbalizing it.

The announcement came as the world’s eyes were fixed on Paris, where the global sports festival had just kicked off with almost no Russian representatives, when there were around 330 of them in Tokyo in 2021. The cause was the drastic conditions imposed on them by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), while the war was ongoing: no parade at the opening and closing ceremonies, participation under the banner of “neutral individual athlete”, no flag, no anthem, and a ban on wearing equipment in the national colours – the teams themselves were automatically excluded.

The athletes in question also had to not have supported the offensive in Ukraine, be linked to the army or be part of a national security agency. Belarus, an ally of Moscow, was subject to the same fate.

The memory of 1984

Unthinkable for some. Several Russian federations, including those of judo and wrestling, have thus given up on having their competitors travel to France. In the end, only fifteen “neutral” athletes from the country were at the Olympic Games, with a meager 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 to the project. “None of us should participate in any way in such so-called sporting events with political aims.”its president, Thomas Bach, had launched to the Olympic movement during the Forum of International Federations in Lausanne (Switzerland) in November 2023.

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

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, already called the Friendship Games. Forty-nine nations were present, but only those that boycotted the Californian grand event fielded their best athletes, the others sent reserve teams.

In its press release of July 30, the International Friendship Association argued that the postponement of the meeting “will allow a more representative list of participants to be established”. Otherwise, this “new chapter” desired by Moscow will, once again, come up against the principle of credibility.