Iran has banned a weightlifter from sports for life and dissolved a sports committee after the athlete greeted an Israeli counterpart on a podium.
Mostafa Rajaei, a veteran weightlifter, finished second in his category in the 2023 World Master Weightlifting Championships in Poland and stood on a podium with an Iranian flag wrapped around him on Saturday.
On anther step of the podium stood Maksim Svirsky from Israel, who finished third.
The two athletes shook hands and took a picture together, which led to the Iran Weightlifting Federation banning Rajaei from all sports for life due to what it called an “unforgivable” transgression.
I do agree, but I also imagine, they did not literally mean that politics should never occur in all of sports.
They probably meant that sports competitions should be held with mutual respect, independent of politics. If you can’t shake someone’s hand, you’re not either going to be cool with them winning, so there’s a big risk of you not competing fairly. That’s the bare minimum where politics need to be kept out of sports.
Mutual respect and being apolitical are definitely not the same things. Like I said, politics has always been a part of sports.