Australia’s Olympic chief Carroll greenlights Russia, Belarus for 2032 Summer Olympics

The National Olympic Committee of Australia (AOC) expressed its readiness to welcome athletes representing Russia and Belarus at the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, AOC Chief Executive Matt Carroll told journalists on March 27.

According to Carroll, Russian and Belarusian athletes "will take part in the 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, despite the opposition of the Australian federal government", TASS reports.

"It's not the athletes who started the war, who are causing the grief and the tragedy," Carroll stated. "The AOC's position is that of the International Olympic Committee."

After Tokyo was home to the Olympic flame at the 2020 Summer Games, it will travel to Paris for the Summer Games in 2024, and then to Los Angeles in 2028. In 2021, at the 138th IOC (the International Olympic Committee) session in Tokyo, Australia’s Brisbane was selected to host the 2032 Summer Olympic Games.

On February 2, the sports ministers of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland urged the IOC and International Federations (IFs) to ban athletes representing Russia and Belarus from taking part in the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris.

On February 9, Reuters news agency quoted IOC President Thomas Bach as saying in a statement that a possible boycott of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games in Paris by the Ukrainian National Olympic Committee (NOC) would be in violation of the Olympic Charter.