Russians and Belarusians to compete in tennis at 2024 Olympic Games

Daniil Medvedev (Dacoucou, Wikimedia Commons)

According to Reuters on Wednesday, Russians and Belarusians will be allowed to compete at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. The Russian and Belarusian athletes will not participate for their own individual nations of Russia and Belarus, but for a group of athletes known as the Individual Neutral Athletes.

Russian and Belarusian athletes are not allowed to compete for Russia and Belarus respectively because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian and Belarusian athletes were previously not allowed to compete at Wimbledon in 2022. The decision to ban the Russians and Belarusians was opposed by the ATP and WTA Tours, who threatened sanctions against the Great Britain Lawn Tennis Association if they repeated the ban in 2023.

The International Olympic Committee has left it up to each international sports federation whether to allow the Russians and Belarusians or not. It is interesting that the International Tennis Federation are allowing Russians and Belarusians to compete, when they have not been allowed to participate at the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup. It will now be interesting to see how many Russians and Belarusians will be competing, and if there will be more than two athletes from the Individual Neutral Athletes in the men’s, women’s, men’s doubles, women’s doubles and mixed doubles draws.

So far there will be competitors from the Individual Neutral Athletes competing in cycling, rowing, tennis, swimming, taekwondo and wrestling at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.  Russian athletes who have won gold medals in the past have been Yevgeny Kafelnikov (men’s singles at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney), Elena Dementieva (women’s singles at the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing), Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina (women’s doubles at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro), and Anastasia Pavyluchenkova and Andrey Rublev (mixed doubles at the 2020 Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2021). Belarus’s gold medal from the past came from Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi in mixed doubles at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

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