Humphrey Appleby

Something must be done, and here is something..!

Even if that were true - which is isn't - it still wouldn't make it right. Russians representing Russian federations and in official Russian teams are being excluded from sporting events, and few would object to that. However, wielding the pitchforks against people simply because they had the misfortune to be born somewhere, is really not the way to behave regardless of the strength of everyones' feelings against Russia. We need to distinguish ourselves by our higher standards of behaviour.

The simple answer is that's complete nonsense. If someone has actually taken the citizenship of another country then you can't ban them simply because of an accident of birth. Otherwise you'll create different classes of citizenship within a country, and would be especially unworkable in a country with a largely immigrant population such as Australia. A citizen is a citizen with the same rights as everyone else in their (adopted) country, regardless of the rabble rousing sentiments. If there were going around vocalising support for Russia then you may not want them playing in your tournament (which is fair enough), but if someone is actually condemning Russia what more is expected from them?

You are wrong to target individual Russians who are resident outside of Russia and have no connection to the Putin regime, whether it's sport or any other job they're doing. It doesn't matter how many times you say it, most have nothing to do with Putin and it's a fair bet many if not most oppose his actions. Most of us are outraged by the actions of the Russian government, and frankly I've been outraged by its behaviour for a number of years even if there were a number of apologists for it in the West (and on here) until just over a week ago. You need to make a distinction though, between the Putin regime and the Russian people (even if many have naively support him thanks to the propaganda), and whilst sanctions do have to be put on the country and its residents, believing that exerting pressure on expat Russians will somehow enable Putin's overthrow shows a total lack of understanding of his total control of its state apparatus. It's all too easy to get out the torches and pitchforks against anyone or anything Russian, but history (including two World Wars) has shown it's counterproductive to automatically assume 'enemy aliens' will take the side with their parent country. People often leave their countries because of some dissatisfaction or disagreement with political and/or economic conditions there, and Russians are really no different. This quite aside from the fact that by penalising totally innocent expats, you are far more likely to alienate them against your cause and reinforce Putin's rhetoric that Russians are victimised by the rest of the world. Or put another way, much of the world including most countries in Europe opposed the invasion of Iraq which the UK participated in. I don't recall any British sportspeople being banned from anything, and would you have considered it reasonable and proportionate for British expats to be expelled from all the countries they were living and working in?

And I think that's correct. Individuals are officially representing Russian and Belarus teams (regardless of what they're called) so should not be allowed at the Paralympics.

They'll be more preoccupied with the body bags coming back, and the future additions to the Paralympic team...

It's actually Motorsport UK, but the motorcycle version is the ACU. Motorsport UK have not actually banned Russian competitors, but Russian-licensed competitors. I think it's academic about Mazepin anyway, as Haas have pulled Daddy's sponsorship, he's a poor driver, and has had other off-track issues that will make him unpalatable if he's not bringing any money. Moreover, his family is likely closely related to the Putin regime, so it's not quite the same as for other Russian sportspeople.

Whilst it's easy to draw parallels, Iraq's regime had already invaded two other countries, had in the past used chemical weapons (against Iran and the Kurds), conducted ethnic cleansing within its own borders, and was largely kept from further bad behaviour through ongoing sanctions and no-fly zones. Now whilst various Ukraine governments have undoubtedly been a bit corrupt and to various extents pursued nationalist agendas, they're certainly not amongst the worst in the world and have never actually invaded anyone nor been involved in state-sponsored atrocities in the past 75 years or so. To be very clear, Putin has long used the invasions of Iraq and the NATO interventions in the Balkan conflicts to justify his behaviour (e.g. annexation of Crimea and establishment of puppet regimes in parts of Georgia and Moldova), but two wrongs don't make a right.

It will not encourage anything of the sort. The average Russian has no chance of overthrowing Putin who controls all the levers of power including the security forces. No more than Saddam Hussein could be overthrown by Iraqis. All you will do is reinforce Putin's rhetoric that Russians are being victimised in the world, and turn innocent Russians who don't support Putin against you. The only way Putin will be overthrown is when his inner circle, the oligarchs or the Russian military leadership decide enough is enough. There is a strong argument for other countries to make travelling in and out of Russia very difficult, or prevent Russians in Russia from doing business with the rest of the world. It is very wrong to target Russians who already live and work in other countries unless they have some connection to the Putin regime.

And I like I said, are you going to be banning every expat Russian from working, even though most have nothing to do with Putin's regime? We're not talking about Russian teams or riders officially representing Russia - we all agree they should be banned. It's about individuals being allowed to work and earn a living, even if that's riding in the SGP.

I don't know what that has to do with Russians resident in other countries being allowed to continue to work. I'm fully aware it's an appalling situation - not least because I was talking to some people in Ukraine most of last night - but that's not the fault of every Russian. All the Russians I know, including my office mate who's lived in the Netherlands for over 20 years, are appalled by the behaviour of Putin. Why should they be denied work or even worse expelled from the countries they may have lived in for many years, unless they're somehow connected to Putin regime? Let's not start any torchlight pogroms which will just play into Putin's victimhood complex and give him an excuse to invade countries on the grounds of 'protecting Russians'. We should never repeat the appalling treatment of Japanese-Americans, Japanese-Canadians, or German Jews who'd sought refuge in the UK during WW2 and had every reason to support the Allied effort.

Yes, that's the way it works. People should be able to do that if they links to more than one country.

The statement as issued by the IOC Executive Board says exactly that, if you could be bothered to go and read it on the IOC website which is surely the authoritative source. I quoted part of that statement verbatim, so not sure what the confusion is on your part, but you can read it for yourself here... https://olympics.com/ioc/news/ioc-eb-recommends-no-participation-of-russian-and-belarusian-athletes-and-officials No, the link that Grachan posted did not say that, because it was an article in the Gulf Times that left out the important detail.

There are many Russians with Ukrainian parentage, or born in the Ukraine, and vice-versa. The two countries were intertwined for decades if not centuries, in the same way that Britain and Ireland have been. That's the particular tragedy of the situation - brethren are fighting brethren in many cases. Whilst there clearly have to be sanctions against Russians representing Russia in sport, I honestly haven't come across a single expat Russian so far who supports the invasion. Should my Russian workmate who I sit opposite when I'm in the office really not be allowed to work, and by extension how are individuals in professional sport different to that?

No, it comes down to their passport(s) for individual purposes.

The IOC are not proposing to ban individuals, and if Sayfutinov & Laguta are also Polish citizens (as suggested on here earlier) then I think it's unlikely they could be banned anyway.

The IOC seems to be saying they can still compete as independent athletes, just not under any Russian banner. The Paralympics is coming up shortly, so the matter is pressing. The relevant text is... "Russian or Belarusian nationals, be it as individuals or teams, should be accepted only as neutral athletes or neutral teams. No national symbols, colours, flags or anthems should be displayed."

If they also have Polish citizenship then that would be academic anyway.

Well it's a difficult one as it would hardly be fair on other riders if there was an established qualification process that one rider could bypass. As it was, he still had to do a certain number of meetings in the Netherlands (one of which was a speedway meeting that I went to), although from memory they were on Saturdays so maybe he didn't need to miss an lucrative grasstrack/longtrack bookings as a result. I seem to remember though, that riders needed to finish in the top 20 of the British Masters to get a licence to race internationally, which strikes me as being nothing but restraint of trade and probably illegal.

I thought that was farcical appeasement given their 'ban' was because of state sponsorship of doping programmes. To then allow them back to compete as a Russian team, however it was dressed up, was no sanction at all. No particular problem with Russians continuing to compete as independent individuals (e.g. tennis players and speedway riders), but teams and individuals officially representing Russia should not be allowed. Life isn't fair. When the UK left the EU, British citizens immediately lost a lot of rights regardless of how they'd voted in the referendum, and that wasn't even about starting a war.

Is Dave Hammond still around?

Every time he opened his mouth he was annoying, especially when he forgot which track he was supposed to be at. I do actually think it's a difficult job, especially in speedway where you've got to fill a lot of dead time and there's only so many things you can say about four riders going around in circles. I didn't find him too bad as a deejay years ago, albeit a bit Smashie and Nicey, but it was better when he just read out the results at the speedway.

This reply is a bit late, but the story is quite well known in the Brisbane area at least, and there's a Bee Gees trail in Redcliffe which is a sort of outer coastal suburb of Brisbane. I cycle over to Redcliffe occasionally.

Well speedway really only has a sizeable following in about 3 or 4 countries, but the BSI didn't really seem to do much in the way of the promotion in the smaller markets. Only seemed to be interested in getting the staging fees from the local promoters and leaving it all to them, or where they promoted it themselves to fulfil some sort of contractual obligation, to do it as cheaply as possible. With Monaco, I'd imagine they were under the impression they could wrangle a sizeable staging fee out of the local organisers, but the Grimaldis didn't get where they are by giving their money away. Especially not on a sport with the sort of demographic that speedway has. There probably was some sort of reasonable attempt in the earlier years to take the SGP to better venues as well as extend the appeal to a wider range of countries, but I think in the end they realised they weren't going to grow it and largely decided to run things at a relatively modest level without pushing the boat out too much. Think a new promotion is long overdue and it'll be interesting to see whether they take things further than ING/BSI.

If I remember, it was to do with team race suit covers which were made of some sort of stretchy material to which you couldn't easily attach different numbers.