Winter Paralympics 2022: IPC to decide Russia fate on Wednesday

A decision about banning Russian athletes from the 2022 Winter Paralympics will be made on Wednesday after it was confirmed the full Ukraine squad will take part in Beijing.

All Russian athletes have arrived before the Games start later this week.

The opening ceremony is on Friday, with competition starting on Saturday.

International Paralympic Committee, IPC’s President, Andrew Parsons said; “Any decision we take is open to legal challenge from different sides,

“This is what we need to be very careful about because it could be from Russia or from other nations.

“We need to make a decision based on our constitution and the values we stand for.”

Russian athletes will compete under the Russian Paralympic Committee flag at the Winter Paralympics following a ban imposed in 2020 for state-sponsored doping.

At Pyeongchang in 2018, they competed under a neutral flag for the same reason.

Parsons said the IPC understood some athletes from other nations might choose not to participate if the Russians are allowed to take part.

Ukrainian athletes – as well as the British Olympic Association- have called for Russians to be excluded from the event.

The full Ukraine team, which consists of 20 athletes and nine guides across biathlon and cross-country skiing, will be able to compete in the Chinese capital.

There had been concerns the athletes would not be able to travel safely.

But the Ukrainian Disabled Sports Committee has announced the athletes will arrive on Wednesday.

“Part of the team is in one place, part is in another. I hope that today we will unite and get to the airport and go to Beijing together,” a spokesperson for the committee, Natalia Garach said.

He said; “The team is not in Ukraine. We will not tell where we are.”

Sporting organisations are continuing to impose sanctions on Russian teams and athletes after the country, supported by Belarus, launched a military invasion of Ukraine last Thursday.

On Monday, Russian football clubs and national teams were suspended from all competitions by Fifa and Uefa “until further notice”.

It means the Russian men’s team will not play their World Cup play-off matches next month and the women’s team have been banned from this summer’s Euro 2022 competition.

The International Olympic Committee has urged sport governing bodies to ban Russian and Belarusian athletes.

BBC/Mercy Chukwudiebere