Great Britain Cycling Team performance director Stephen Park has said there is “no way” that Belarus can host the European Track Cycling Championships next month following the outcry over the forced landing in Minsk earlier this week of a Ryanair flight from Greece to Lithuania carrying dissident journalist Roman Protasevich, who was removed from the aircraft and arrested, together with his partner.
The championships, due to take place from 23-27 June have taken on additional significance this year due to the lack of competition top track cyclists have experienced in the build-up to the postponed Tokyo Olympics, which begin in late July, due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Writing on Twitter, Park said: “With 27 EU member states telling EU airlines not to fly over Belarus, and promising further economic sanctions there can surely be no way the @UEC_cycling can continue to deliver the Track Euros in Minsk next month.”
Continental governing body the Union Européenne de Cyclisme (UEC) has said that “In light of the recent international events [it] is carefully monitoring the situation,” and that a decision will be made at its management board meeting tomorrow over the event.
It added that no further update would be provided until that meeting has taken place, although essentially it is faced with three choices – to let the event proceed as planned, which looks highly unlikely, to cancel it altogether, or switch it to another country, which given the importance of pre-Olympic competition would presumably be most welcomed by the continent’s major federations.
BDR, the German national cycling federation, informed the UEC yesterday that it would not be participating in the event as a result of what the EU has described as an “attack on European sovereignty.”
The Dutch national federation, the KNWU, has not yet formally withdrawn from the championships, but its head yesterday advised its athletes not to travel to Minsk, reports NL Times.
The governing body’s chair, Thorwald Veneberg, speaking on the radio show Langs de Lijn En Omreken, said: “For us, the importance of sport matters. But it should not be an expedition, especially if there are all kinds of consequences that we cannot foresee. Then you should not take the risk.
“We are really heading for a major political crisis,” he continued. “I wouldn't want to go there anyway, but there are athletes who say: there are so few competitions, I still have to prepare for the Olympics. My advice is not to do that." he added.
Despite the saying that “sport and politics shouldn’t mix,” the fact is that they very often do, and Park was asked on Twitter about whether GB cyclists should compete in upcoming events elsewhere.
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To be honest, I am surprised the decision hasn't already been made. The IIHF removed Belarus as host of the World Ice Hockey Championships due to the situation there (and with full support of the Belarus opposition parties) even before this latest incident.
This is a manufactured drama.
All the EU nations sat quietly and either did not critisize, while several of them actively participated in a US-driven action force Evo Morales presidential jet to land in Austria, so they could search for the whistleblower and US dissident Snowden:
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-latin-america-23157378
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident
Meanwhile the EU courts just this week ruled that Snowden had indeed revealed unconstititional behavior by EU governments that violated the rights of European people:
https://twitter.com/arusbridger/status/1397134410873511936
This type of monstrous political hypocrisy and gaslighting should not be allowed to interfere with sports, which is one of the few arenas that is successful in bringing human beings closer together in peace!
It's already been decided, they aren't going to Minsk, the UEC is just trying to work out where to hold it. With no one flying into Belarussian air space, it makes it rather pointless in holding it there.
So two wrongs *do* make a right, is that what you're saying?
Nope.
Hopefully its not going to strain anyone's mind to detect the problem here.
What should be clear is this has nothing to do with sport - and not even democracy. Every government posturing here just got exposed as not giving a damn about the rights of their own citizens - and noe of them stood up for Snowden: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/05/uk-surveillance-gchq-ecth...
I don't think it can be construed as confected indignation. I imagine in the European corridors of power there really is a sense of outrage, regardless of any charges of hypocrisy (which seem totally warranted) even if it's only because 'the other guys' did it this time around. That being said, precedent doesn't make the act itself any less wrong, nor Lukashenko's thin-skinned autocracy any less authoritarian.
While there's no doubt that the US used political influence to send a message to Morales and ground his, there's a big difference between what happened in these two case: the US did not send a fighter jet to force Morales' flight down.
That's a huge difference. If you don't see that difference, then perhaps you might want to look a bit more closely at Alexander Lukashenko and his rule in Belarus.