Thomas Bach got excited about the World Friendship Games in Russia: the rejection of the phantom

Curiously, of course, thinks Thomas Bach. Here – downright offended: you fight for them in this Russia, you fight again, but they are still unhappy. Says: “The Russian government accuses us of non-compliance with political neutrality.” And he continues: “At the same time, this same government is trying to organize absolutely politicized sports competitions.” Apparently, Bahu would like us to use the sanctions and criteria born by him inside the country.

It seems that the IOC was agitated by the decision to hold either the World Friendship Games in Russia, or tournaments together with the SCO and BRICS countries, or all together. The Summer World Friendship Games have already been announced in Moscow, right after the Olympic Games in Paris. Winter – in Sochi, not earlier than 2026, that is, in the year of the Olympic Games in Italy. The official presentation of the competition was as follows: The Friendship Games are complex international competitions. They will be held under the auspices of the Russian Ministry of Sports and will be cyclical. And this is not an attempt to replace the Olympic Games due to sanctions against Russian athletes.

Bach says something like this: so what – we will have the Games of the political bloc A, the Games of the political bloc B, the Games of those who do not want to join anyone? And the Olympic Games? “Under such conditions, they simply will not be possible.” And he believes that all our ideas on how not to leave Russia’s sport thrown out of the world calendar without a main cause are just an attempt to “organize absolutely politicized sports competitions.” And what about you today, Thomas?

And Bach’s thought, it turns out, is simple. Like – you don’t go to international competitions, it’s forbidden, so pull the suspension strap, why don’t you look for internal replacements? Wait for our positive response, someday you will. He probably wants us all over the country, and from children’s sports to adults, to join the sanctions that he and his colleagues (not only in the IOC) came up with, and now they are trying to cancel with heroic efforts.

We will still wait for the return, but in parallel. And someday we really will. True, when is not even a question for discussion, as long as we live in daily events. Although there are many questions. Here Bach says: I can’t understand why Ukraine forbids its athletes to compete with the Russians, but they beat their own… What a fair and sincerely unintelligent guy, it turns out. We also have accumulated a lot of such “I can’t understand”. And the ban on Russia and Belarus to go to international competitions? Didn’t he hit on world sports?

In the daily events that we live in, we have a zero rating in almost all sports now. And, as one of the sports leaders said, we have turned from a world leader into a phantom. We’ll go back sometime from “nowhere”. So, if we don’t give birth to reasons for competition inside, we don’t feel the thirst to be the first, then we will remain a phantom.

“This tournament will be one of the flagship ones,” Marat Filippov, secretary of the Council for Sports under the President of Russia, said about the Friendship Games, referring to the head of state. “This is not an alternative to the Olympics – this is an attractive, commercially successful tournament for world sports stars.”

… I started telling one of my friends about Friendship-84, the names somehow overlap. She told without any parallels with reality, she simply went down in history. The appearance of the start was a forced measure: first there was a boycott of the Olympic Games in Moscow-80, announced by the United States and supported by 65 states due to the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan at the request of the Afghan government. We and the countries of the socialist camp have already missed the next Games in Los Angeles. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU decided: “To consider it inappropriate for the participation of Soviet athletes in the Olympic Games in Los Angeles due to the gross violation by the American side of the Olympic Charter, the lack of proper security measures for the USSR delegation and the anti-Soviet campaign launched in the USA.”

And so the international competitions “Friendship-1984” were born, which were held in nine countries on three continents: in Bulgaria, Hungary, East Germany, North Korea, Cuba, Mongolia, Poland, the USSR and Czechoslovakia. (Each country was given its sports interest: USSR – athletics, basketball, rowing, fencing – Hungary, boxing – Cuba, table tennis – North Korea, rhythmic gymnastics and weightlifting – Bulgaria, artistic gymnastics and archery – Czechoslovakia. Three month of competition, 50 participating countries, and athletes who participated in the 1984 Olympic Games also competed: from Great Britain, the USA, France, China, Italy, Canada … 48 world records against 11 in Los Angeles.

So, I immersed myself in the numbers and the results of the tournament in such a way that pity rolled over: why didn’t we save it at least in some traditional format? Not as an opposition to the Games – this idea has already been voiced many times, and will continue to be voiced (and even then, in 1984, it was also spoken), but as a self-sufficient tournament. And today it would already have a rich history. Yes, the scope, of course, would be different – three months of starts scattered across different countries – this is just too much in modern realities. But the very idea of ​​not Olympic, but very large international competitions, would grow with traditions, experience and reputation.

Now we start from the same zero rating. Although this does not mean that none of the foreign world stars will come to these Games. Who is after the glory, who is after the prize money – but they will catch up. “Commercially successful, attractive” – ​​the words are not accidental. Maybe not in a crowd at first, but strong athletes will come. How beautifully and skillfully we are able to hold tournaments, no one needs to tell.

Once you start, you don’t have to stop. So it’s good that it was immediately announced: they will be held every four years. Although the time of the event may still have to be chosen other than in the Olympic year: a four-year cycle allows this.

In the meantime, everything is developing with a new proposed tournament, whether the jealous Bach likes it or not, not quickly, but very quickly. September of next year is within reach, just over a year. Aleksey Sorokin, the well-known general director of the organizing committee of the 2018 FIFA World Cup, headed the organizing committee of the World Friendship Games.

And this Monday was the final day when the leaders of the all-Russian sports federations (until June 26) were supposed to send proposals to the organizing committee of the World Friendship Games on the formation of a program for a “complex event” in September 2024 in Moscow. How many participants are expected in a sport, how many coaches, judges, specialists, at which venues it is preferable to compete, what equipment is needed …

And Thomas Bach, who clearly felt that in response to endless sanctions, an initiative is being born that can interest and captivate athletes, let him follow our actions. You look, will draw something good and useful.