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A total of 2,214 athletes from 22 countries have registered to take part in the CIS Games, which started in Belarus capital Minsk today and which is due to feature a spectacular Opening Ceremony tomorrow.
The nine members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), formed following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, including Russia, are all competing and have been joined by several countries from outside the bloc.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, along with a squad of more than 400 from Russia, will be competing alongside teams from Iran, Egypt, Malaysia, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Cuba.
The Games, the first edition of which took place in Kazan in 2021, have gained extra significance following the suspension imposed by the International Olympic Committee on Russia and Belarus after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
“This is a landmark, bright event, confirming that sport is out of politics, and the benevolent open relations of Belarus and Russia towards athletes from the countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States, from friendly countries, are unchanged and especially significant,” Dmitry Mezentsev, State Secretary of the Union State of Belarus and Russia, told official news agency TASS.
Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko also took an opportunity to claim the presence of countries from outside the CIS showed that they disagreed with the IOC’s sanctions.
“The competitions demonstrate unity and strong friendship between our countries,” he told TASS.
Russian Ambassador to Belarus Boris Gryzlov claimed that the CIS Games would show the IOC and countries calling for his country to be banned from next year’s Olympic Games in Paris what they are missing.
“International sports officials, dutifully fulfilling the demands of the collective West, are destroying world sports with their own hands,” he told Belarus’ official state news agency BelTA.
“But it is impossible to turn off the sun by closing the curtains and turning off the lights at home.”
Russia’s Sports Minister Oleg Matytsin is expected to attend the Opening Ceremony at the Minsk-Arena tomorrow.
Among Belarus athletes expected to take part in the Opening Ceremony are double Olympic rowing gold medallist Ekaterina Karsten and Yanina Provalinskaya-Korolchik, winner of the shot put at Sydney 2000 but who was unable to defend her title at Athens 2004 after testing positive for banned anabolic steroids.
A total of 20 sports are on the programme of the CIS Games, which are due to conclude on August 13.
They include Olympic sports 3×3 basketball, archery, athletics, beach volleyball, boxing, handball, hockey, judo, modern pentathlon, rhythmic gymnastics, shooting, swimming and weightlifting.
In addition, the programme includes non-Olympic sports like muaythai and sambo.
Competition started today with rhythmic gymnastics.
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Duncan Mackay is the founding editor of insidethegames.biz, the world’s leading and most influential independent Olympic news website. He was voted the British Sports Writer of the Year in 2004, British News Story of the Year in 2004 and British Sports Internet Reporter of the Year in 2009. Mackay is one of Britain’s best-connected journalists and during the 16 years he worked at The Guardian and The Observer he regularly broke several major exclusive stories. He was also the only newspaper journalist in Britain to correctly predict that London would win its bid for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.
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For nearly 15 years now, insidethegames.biz has been at the forefront of reporting fearlessly on what happens in the Olympic Movement. As the first website not to be placed behind a paywall, we have made news about the International Olympic Committee, the Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Commonwealth Games and other major events more accessible than ever to everybody.
insidethegames.biz has established a global reputation for the excellence of its reporting and breadth of its coverage. For many of our readers from more than 200 countries and territories around the world the website is a vital part of their daily lives. The ping of our free daily email alert, sent every morning at 6.30am UK time 365 days a year, landing in their inbox, is as a familiar part of their day as their first cup of coffee.
Even during the worst times of the COVID-19 pandemic, insidethegames.biz maintained its high standard of reporting on all the news from around the globe on a daily basis. We were the first publication in the world to signal the threat that the Olympic Movement faced from the coronavirus and have provided unparalleled coverage of the pandemic since.
As the world begins to emerge from the COVID crisis, insidethegames.biz would like to invite you to help us on our journey by funding our independent journalism. Your vital support would mean we can continue to report so comprehensively on the Olympic Movement and the events that shape it. It would mean we can keep our website open for everyone. Last year, nearly 25 million people read insidethegames.biz, making us by far the biggest source of independent news on what is happening in world sport.
Every contribution, however big or small, will help maintain and improve our worldwide coverage in the year ahead. Our small and dedicated team were extremely busy last year covering the re-arranged Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo, an unprecedented logistical challenge that stretched our tight resources to the limit.
The remainder of 2022 is not going to be any less busy, or less challenging. We had the Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games in Beijing, where we sent a team of four reporters, and coming up are the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, the Summer World University and Asian Games in China, the World Games in Alabama and multiple World Championships. Plus, of course, there is the FIFA World Cup in Qatar.
Unlike many others, insidethegames.biz is available for everyone to read, regardless of what they can afford to pay. We do this because we believe that sport belongs to everybody, and everybody should be able to read information regardless of their financial situation. While others try to benefit financially from information, we are committed to sharing it with as many people as possible. The greater the number of people that can keep up to date with global events, and understand their impact, the more sport will be forced to be transparent.
Support insidethegames.biz for as little as £10 – it only takes a minute. If you can, please consider supporting us with a regular amount each month. Thank you.
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