KEIR RADNEDGE COMMENTARY 

–The two-year jail sentence imposed by a Moscow court on the three women members of the punk music band Pussy Riot will inevitably mean a public relations headache for organisers of the Sochi Winter Olympics — the first Games held in Russia since the controversial, boycott-belabored summer extravaganza in the capital in 1980.

Foreign observers had expected the band members – who broke into a cathedral to perform an anti-Putin song – to be handed three-year terms. The court’s leniency, if it can be considered such in the circumstances, means that the trio will be coming out of jail in the same year as other members of Pierre de Coubertin’s favoured ‘youth of the world’ will be heading for the Black Sea resort for ‘mere’ sport.

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The prospect for the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge and his post-September-2013 successor, is of a revival of the siege from the same human rights advocates who questioned the decision to take the 2008 summer Games to Beijing.

In that case Rogge defended a decision taken during the reign of Juan Antonio Samaranch (a man from a very different political hinterland) by insisting that the Olympic Movement had no right to enforce change but it could, in its own small way, assist the process.

Remedial action

Presumably the same argument will be wheeled out again though Russia, since the Sochi award and viewing a recent tightening of anti-protest laws since Vladimir Putin return to the Presidency, has displayed more regression than progression.

Sochi has already had to withstand complaints, and offer remedial action, over the irreparable environmental damage inflicted in the creation of the mountain venues and the business connections of one or two Very Important People in the IOC have come under scrutiny in the process. The promotional and reactive skill of Dmitri Chernyshenko, Sochi 2014′s president and ceo, has largely neutered such concerns but they will be revived and revisited now the issue of freedom of expression and free speech has been kindled.

Back in October 2010, while paying one of his frequent visits to London, Chernyshenko asked me: “Why does the Olympics always have these issues to deal with but the [football] World Cup doesn’t?”

The World Cup and FIFA, of course, must confront other major issues all their own. But the simple answer to Chernyshenko’s question was that the IOC, by claiming ownership of the moral high ground with the high-falutin’ language and ideals of the Olympic Charter, sets itself up for accusations of hypocrisy – whether the issue is free speech or the freedom to make zillions-worth of commercial deals with fast-food producers and chemical companies.

At least London 2012 had ‘only’ practical challenges rather than intellectual ones. And, as the G4S fiasco proved, if you have enough money and bodies to throw at a problem then you can stage a sports event just about anywhere, anyhow, in any circumstances (a soothing thought for all those growing concerned about the upcoming translation of World Cup and Olympic Games to Brazil).

Only forward, not back

The Winter Olympics in 2014 will go ahead in Sochi, of a certainty, whatever the furore over Pussy Riot. Just as the World Cup will go ahead in Russia in 2018 and then in Qatar in 2022. Any talk of investigating that FIFA process or reopening the bidding is facile nonsense and not even worth the blink of a second thought. To reopen Qatar means reopening Russia and FIFA president Sepp Blatter and his acolytes have enough on their hands without taking on Putin in his present mood.

Then again, as a senior director of the failed United States 2022 bid pointed out to me only this week: “Sure, there were changes in the IOC and people went to prison because of the Salt Lake City scandal. But where did the Games end up? Salt Lake City.”

Pussy Riot just ensured that the flight to Sochi may be slightly bumpier than Rogge & Co had anticipated.

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