CORTINA D’AMPEZZO, Italy (AP) — Ukraine’s Paralympic committee has accused the International Paralympic Committee and Milan Cortina organizers of subjecting Ukraine’s athletes and coaches to “systematic pressure.”
It released a statement Wednesday with a series of alleged incidents in which it said representatives of the IPC and the local organizing committee pressured and disrespected the Ukrainians.
The incidents included the alleged forceful removal of a Ukrainian flag, the breaking up of planning meetings by the Ukrainian team, and the prohibition of a Ukrainian athlete from wearing a earring with the words “Stop War” in a podium ceremony.
The IPC said it was caught by surprise by the Ukrainian statement.
“We’re surprised by it because we’ve received no feedback from them through chef de mission meetings, which are held each morning,” Craig Spence, the IPC’s chief brand and communications officer, said at the media briefing on Wednesday.
“In addition to that, we have not received any information from them through the formal or informal lines that exist in the Village,” he said. “There’s a lot of Milano Cortina staff there and a lot of IPC staff, but the only time we became aware of this was through the media.”
The Ukrainian National Paralympic Committee said it wanted to avoid a radical reaction, and hoped that the incidents were “random in nature and not biased” toward the Ukrainian team, but it said recent events showed that they were “systematic” and “shameful.”
It said its athletes and coaches had never experienced such negative manifestations before.
Spence said the Ukrainian athlete was kept from wearing the “Stop War” earring on the podium because of Games’ regulations, and said flags must be put on proper places.
“If you look around the venues, it’s pretty obvious that flags are allowed in so we want to just try to determine why these particular flags were not allowed on this particular day, which the Ukrainians raised through the media today,” Spence said.
Ukraine was one of the countries that boycotted the opening ceremony of the Milan Cortina Games because of the IPC decision to give Russian athletes wildcard entries and allow them to compete under their own flag for the first time in more than a decade at the Paralympics.
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AP Winter Paralympics: https://apnews.com/hub/paralympic-games
