The International Olympic Committee will allow some individual athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete as neutral athletes at the Milan Cortina Olympics in February.
The International Olympic Committee will use the same criteria that it was in the Paris Summer Olympics in 2024, where the qualified individual committee from these two countries was examined by a committee. Thirty Russian or Belarusian athletes of 10 different sports were approved to compete as individual neutral athletes (AIN) in Paris.
A team of Russian or Belarusian athletes will not be allowed to compete.
“We fully believe in how to hand over things in Paris,” the head of the Olympic Committee, Locaristi Kovantry, told reporters on Friday from Italy, as Olympic officials toured many places and held the Executive Council meetings this week. “We have a discussion that we need to ensure fairness, of course, and other respectable things. So we decided that everything will remain the same.”
Civil criteria include not supporting Russia’s continuous invasion of Ukraine, which started just days after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and is subject to relations with military or national security agencies. The athletes will compete under the science of individual neutral athlete and will not hear that we will build their country playing if they won the medal.

At least two of the Sports Federation, the International Federation for the Skeleton and the International Federation of Log, They have already said they will not allow Russian athletes to compete in the 2026 games as neutral athletes.
The decision comes on the same day that the International Olympic Committee issued a statement expressing its concern over many conflicts around the world, and disrupting sports competition and “boycotting and canceling competitions due to political tensions.” The International Olympic Committee statement was not released on any specific conflict or country.
“Every member of an individual board and sadness has really been returned, when you look at the world and what is happening today, with the pictures that we see daily,” said Coventry.
The International Olympic Committee announced on Friday that the Executive Board of Directors has established a working group “aimed at ensuring that the Olympic Olympic and Sports Committee remains a political neutral and can support its mission to unify the world in a peaceful competition.”
Coventry is heading to the United Nations summit
After the election of Coventry as the first president of the organization in March, she promised to use diplomacy when dealing with an unpredictable American president, as that country is preparing to welcome the world in Los Angeles for the summer Olympics in 2028.
“When it comes to the United States of America and Los Angeles, I am dealing with them, let’s say, difficult men in high positions since I was 20 years old,” Coventry said during its first press conference in March. “First of all, what I learned is that communication will be essential. This is something that will happen early.”

She said that she believes that Donald Trump wants to succeed Los Angeles games, but stressed that the International Olympic Committee “will not hesitate to our values” in this process.
Coventry has officially acquired the higher position in June, and all eyes will be at the United Nations General Assembly summit next week in New York. This is where Coventry might have its first chance to sit in person with Trump.
“We have a number of heads of countries prescribed in,” said Coventry.
Add additional body weight categories to lift weights
The LA Olympics will have two additional categories for the Ministry of Weight – one for women and one for men – to reduce “incentives for severe weight reduction” and better compatibility with the groups that sport uses in its global championships.
Sports share has not changed – 60 women and 60 men will compete in six body weight categories for each sex, with a total of 10 weighing numbers for each event.
The International Weightlifting Federation said in a statement on Friday.
Questions on the ICE HOCKEY RINK schedule remains
One of the places on the international Olympic Committee tour was the center of its rebuilding, which was defended by local organizers against the desires of the International Olympic Committee, according to a report from the Associated Press.
The sliding center project was Surface saboteurs last year. The backup plan, in the event that the sliding center was not completed on time, was not perfect: the bright athletes and the skeleton had to compete in Lake Plaside, New York, away from the heart of games.
“We have faced problems with the sliding center,” said Christine Clostter, head of the Coordination Committee at the International Olympic Committee for Milan Cortina Games. “We thought that the schedule was very short, and also we believed that taking advantage of the new sliding center may not fulfill the expectations we want.
“After I said all of this, the decision of the national authorities in Italy to establish a slide center … exceeded our expectations: they were delivered on time, and the slipping (center) has already been tested by athletes and I think everything is going well, so I admire the work.”

Milan Cortina’s organizers said earlier this year that the schedule would be narrow. If everything continues, the organizers will not be able to enter the new building to start creating ICE temporarily until October.
This will witness the completion of the ice in December, then it was tested less than two months before the opening of the games.
Andrea Varnene, CEO of Milan Cortina earlier this week, indicated that the schedule is still very narrow. He said that the place “is very close to the games.”
“We know that there are very narrow final dates, and we are watching them and we are really tense because the timing is very important,” he said. “At the present time, they are all in the plan we imagined.”
Varner said in March that the organizers did not see a need for a backup plan for the square.
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