Russians and Belarusians will stay out of international athletics competitions "for the foreseeable future".
This is the position taken by World Athletics, the world federation, which scores a heavy point in favor of those who insist on the exclusion of Russia and Belarus from the Paris 2024 Olympics.
At the end of the executive meeting, President Sebastian Coe announced that the Moscow athletic federation, suspended for seven years following the doping scandal, has been readmitted, but at the same time he reaffirmed his line of intransigence on the participation of Russian athletes and Belarusians, undertaken immediately after the invasion of Ukraine.
The IOC, which had also banned athletes from Moscow and Minsk in February 2022, has openly expressed its willingness to find a solution to allow them to participate as 'neutral athletes' in Paris in recent months.
The new no from the international federation of the main Olympic sport, led by the former English middle-distance runner, represents not only a political but also a practical obstacle, in view of the qualifications.
On the other hand,
On another front, World Athletics has decided that from March 31, transgender athletes will not be able to participate in international competitions among women.
Transgenders, "who have had male puberty", are excluded.
The issue of the participation of athletes who have undergone a gender transition has divided world sport in recent years, forcing in some cases to rewrite the rules and find solutions amidst the controversies, both of the excluded and of sporting opponents.