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IPC boss Andrew Parsons
Photo: PETER CZIBORRA / REUTERS
Much can be learned in these days when war rules the world.
About human behavior, about how people deal with their own mistakes in the past, about ducking away, about courage and bravery.
About how short-lived are certainties and decisions that were valid the day before and suddenly become null and void.
Or you can do it like the International Paralympic Committee IPC and their boss Andrew Parsons.
Just learn nothing from the situation and repeat the mistakes of others.
Only four days ago, the world football association Fifa made a fool of itself when it initially wanted to keep the Russian team in the playoffs for the World Cup against the overall political climate.
When a storm of indignation arose afterwards and numerous national associations announced that they would boycott games against Russia, regardless of Fifa's decision, Fifa had to take a step backwards a day later and then excluded Russia after all.
The embarrassing procedure repeated
As a result, the decision had lost all its momentum, it only seemed lame, toothless, solely a result of public pressure.
Instead of taking a close look at this as a case study, drawing its lessons from it and doing it differently accordingly, the IPC repeated this whole embarrassing FIFA procedure again.
On Wednesday it was initially decided to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to take part in the Paralympics, they should start there as so-called neutral athletes.
Neutral, what a wrong word in these times and in this context.
18 hour half-life
In response, the IPC reaped what everyone could expect and had to expect who hadn't spent the previous week in a cave: shaking their heads, horror, ridicule and a prognosis as to how many hours the half-life of this decision might be.
It was then around 18 hours before the IPC reversed its own decision.
And again with an at least unfortunate, one could also say ignorant justification: “We at the IPC are firmly convinced that sport and politics should not be mixed up.
But through no fault of their own, war has now come to these games, and behind the scenes many governments are influencing our cherished event,' hurried Parsons. Rarely has anyone declared bankruptcy so openly.
After a week of war, after everything that has happened in the meantime, after all that Russia has allowed itself to do in sports policy over the past decade, Parsons still stands up and proclaims that sports and politics should not be mixed will.
The word chutzpah does not adequately describe this.
Deeply sad picture
The fact that he more or less openly admits that the current decision is only the result of political pressure »behind the scenes« crowns the declaration.
There is no clearer way to say that the decision to exclude the athletes is not the result of a learning process, but rather that you give in to pressure.
One day before the opening ceremony, the Paralympics paint a deeply sad picture.
And we haven't even talked about the host China, the dictatorship that is allowed to adorn itself with the next major sporting event after the Olympic Games.
The dictatorship of ruler Xi Jinping, who, according to media reports, is said to have persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to wait until after the Olympic Games to attack Ukraine so as not to overshadow the sporting event.
He didn't care about the Paralympics then.
The sport is currently finding it difficult to find its position.
For too long he made himself comfortable in the nest of lenders and didn't ask who he was getting involved with: Russia, China, Qatar.
Because the money flowed so nicely, and because there are people at the top of world sport who embody many things, but not what sport is supposed to stand for.
And again you have to talk about the IOC President.
While the President of the German Disabled Sports Association DBS, Friedhelm Julius Beucher, on Wednesday called the IPC's attitude "disappointing and despondent" and said he "couldn't have imagined that such a decision would be possible given the atrocities of war in Ukraine". At the same time, Thomas Bach had nothing more urgent to do than approve the IPC decision.
“We can only hold accountable those responsible for this war.
The Russian Olympic Committee is not responsible for this,” Bach said on Wednesday in the well-known diction: “We fully respect this decision.”
Respect, wholeheartedly - exactly what must be denied to this IOC President.