By Amy Tennery
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Johan Eliasch, a candidate for International Olympic Committee president, said the global Olympic governing body should take care to avoid political issues, tamping down concerns over the impact of a potential travel ban on the 2028 Los Angeles Games.
Sources told Reuters on Thursday that U.S. President Donald Trump was set to ban people from Afghanistan and Pakistan from entering the U.S. as early as next week, harkening back to his first-term ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries.
The move would come three years before tens of thousands of athletes, coaches, officials and fans from around the world arrive for the quadrennial sport showpiece in Los Angeles.
Asked how the IOC should respond if athletes from Pakistan or Afghanistan were unable to visit the U.S., the multi-millionaire Swedish-British dual national replied:
“Let’s put it this way: I think President Trump is somebody who will understand the importance of having the best athletes participate in LA28.”
“When it comes to political policies, we should always stay out of that, that theatre. And if we take sides, it’s simply the wrong thing for us to do,” he told Reuters in an interview.
Eliasch, president of the International Ski Federation and one of seven candidates to succeed Thomas Bach as president of the IOC, swatted aside concerns that a travel ban could force the Games to be moved: “People understand that politics are politics and sport is sport.”
He has made political neutrality a key piece of his platform ahead of the IOC session held from March 18-21, when he hopes to earn the votes to succeed Bach following his departure in June.
“Our political neutrality is founded in the fact that sport is a human right. And athletes can’t – they can’t choose where they were born,” he said.
“So therefore on no planet can one weaponise athletes for political purposes.”
His remarks come as Bach on Friday attempted to soothe concerns over Trump’s influence on the Los Angeles Games, saying he was confident of the U.S. president’s support.
IOC OPPOSES UNIVERSAL TRANSGENDER RULE
Trump signed an executive order banning transgender girls and women from women’s sports last month, clashing with international norms and an IOC rule that allows transgender athletes to take part in the Olympics.
Eliasch would move to block transgender participation in the Games, along with other candidates in next month’s vote, a move he said would allow the IOC to “ring-fence” women’s sport.
The IOC has so far staunchly opposed imposing a universal rule, instead leaving it up to the international federations (IFs) to come up with their own rules for their sport.
“The IOC can’t apply a universal rule. It’s for the IFs to choose whether they want to implement it or not,” he said.
“What we can do is apply rules for the Games. And here my position is very clear and that is if you’re formed with the (sex-determining) SRY gene, you can never compete with women.”
The lengthy campaign for one of global sport’s most powerful jobs has seen Eliasch at times at odds with long-time friends including World Athletics head Sebastian Coe, also a candidate for IOC president.
Coe broke with decades of tradition last year when he offered prize money to athletics gold medallists at the Paris Games, a move Eliasch said was inconsistent with Olympic values.
“If one went down this route, I think it’s a slippery slope because you would then have to make sure that the prize money is equal across the board,” he said. “And in some sports, the prize money that we could offer is just not meaningful.”
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York, Editing by William Maclean)
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