TALLINN, Estonia – Watching the Paris Olympics it will be difficult for most people in Russia – and in the opinion of their media, it is not really worth the effort.
Only 15 Russian citizens will compete in the Games and, in principle, will not represent Russia. Because Russia and neighboring Belarus were banned from presenting national teams due to the war in Ukraine, Russian and Belarusian athletes approved to compete will be doing so as neutrals.
Russians have been big fans of the Olympics since the days when the Soviet Union’s sporting prowess was nicknamed “The Big Red Machine.” But with so few compatriots competing, Russia’s state TV channels are not broadcasting any of the events. Russians can find feeds online, but may need a virtual private network to bypass the country’s blocking of some channels.
The last time the Olympics were not shown on TV in Russia – which won the second most medals, counting the Soviet era – was in 1984, when the Soviet Union boycotted the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
State news channel Rossiya 24 broadcast a report from Paris about the opening ceremony Friday night, showing dancing and clouds of colored smoke rising over the River Seine. News agencies Tass and RIA-Novosti paid attention, with terse stories saying the opening ceremony had begun, but with few details beyond noting the rain took many spectators away.
Newspapers are not completely ignoring the Olympic Games, but their main approach has been to accentuate the negative aspect, writing at length about crime in Paris, the inconvenience of barricades placed throughout the city and the reported shortage of food for athletes.
“The Paris Olympics are an incredible event, not to say a phenomenon: competitions in individual disciplines have just begun, the opening ceremony has not even taken place yet and so many scandals have already accumulated that they will be enough for several Games,” The Sovietsky newspaper reporter Sport, Alexander Shulgin, wrote Thursday.
“I think this Olympics will go down in history with a totally negative result”, quoted the newspaper Sport-Ekspress Irina Rodnina, three-time gold medalist in figure skating and now a member of the Russian parliament, as he said.
A whiff of sadness wafts through many of the stories. Writing about the fences and barriers erected in Paris, Andrei Tupikov of Sovietsky Sport said: “Once upon a time, everyone was pointing the finger at the structure of sports competitions in Russia. Many did not like the fact that before any mass event there were many different fences and barriers around arenas and stadiums. … In our reality, the practice is slowly disappearing, but in Europe it is being actively adopted.”
Shulgin, apparently hurt by criticism of the facilities at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, suggested Paris could face an opening ceremony embarrassment similar to that in Sochi when an Olympic rings display failed.
“If the ring were not opened in Sochi, it is scary to imagine what could happen in Paris,” he wrote, but did not continue with the ceremony.
There is no such disaster occurred, but Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on Saturday compared Paris unfavorably to Sochi.
“The Western media did not like (stray) dogs at the Sochi Games. In Paris, the rats that flooded the city streets smiled at them,” she said in a statement. She also called the opening ceremony “ridiculous.”
Commentary on the Paris Games also addressed ethical and philosophical questions, such as whether we should support the few Russians participating despite their exclusion from the national team. To receive approval from the International Olympic Committee, athletes cannot have shown support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, among other stipulations.
Sport-Ekspress commentator Oleg Shamonaev analyzed the connotations of each word in the Individual Neutral Athlete designation and concluded: “The 15 ‘neutrals’ with Russian passports who did not change their flag despite 2 and a half years of sanctions.. .are worthy not of condemnation, but of respect.”
“It’s stupid to pretend we don’t care what happens to them at the 2024 Games,” he said.
___
For more Paris Olympics coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/2024-paris-olympic-games.
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
