{"id":280496,"date":"2026-02-04T16:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/280496\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T16:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T16:02:07","slug":"winter-olympics-2026-russian-athletes-linked-to-pro-war-activity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/280496\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Olympics 2026: Russian athletes linked to pro-war activity"},"content":{"rendered":"

The final decision on whether the four athletes could compete in Milan-Cortina was taken by the IOC’s Individual Neutral Athlete Eligibility Review Panel.<\/p>\n

Watanabe sits on the panel as the representative of international sports federations, by virtue of his role as president of World Gymnastics. He was also a candidate in last year’s IOC presidential election.<\/p>\n

In March 2025, Watanabe was filmed embracing Nagorny during a visit to Moscow.<\/p>\n

Nagorny, an Olympic gold medallist at the Tokyo Games, has been a prominent supporter of Russia’s war in Ukraine. <\/p>\n

He served as head of Yunarmiya, Russia’s youth military organisation, between 2020 and 2024 and has been sanctioned by the UK, European Union and United States, external<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The UK sanctions notice accuses Nagorny of involvement in the forced deportation and re-education of Ukrainian children.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s crazy,” said Heraskevych, who held up a \u2018No War\u2019 sign at the Beijing Games<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“He’s still hugging this person and still friendly with him. And then he decides whether these Russians are guilty or not guilty, whether they are engaged in the war or not.”<\/p>\n

World Gymnastics, responding on behalf of Watanabe, said it would not comment on the IOC panel or its decisions.<\/p>\n

It said Watanabe’s visit to Russia “took place a few days after he visited Ukraine” and that its purpose “was to show support to athletes affected by the war, on both sides”.<\/p>\n

“Mr Nagorny has not been allowed to participate in World Gymnastics competitions since the beginning of the conflict,” it added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The final decision on whether the four athletes could compete in Milan-Cortina was taken by the IOC’s Individual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280497,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-280496","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280496"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280496\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280497"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}