By Agencies
The international organization BRICS, comprising Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa, is actively expanding its sphere of influence and increasing cooperation in the field of sport.
The other day, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed his government to prepare a plan to host the bloc’s large-scale sports tournament in 2024. It is worth realizing that the Russian leader, known for his reverence for international cultural and sporting events, is not going to engage in the organization of the BRICS International Sports Games in vain.
The instruction to stage such a tournament means there is a consensus between the authorities in Russia, China, India, Brazil, and South Africa on the issue of cooperation in this area.
Moreover, given the choice of location for the games of this new political-economic bloc, it is certain that its members are ready to provide strong moral support to Moscow, whose athletes have recently become victims of numerous sanctions and are barred from participating in most of the traditional championships of pro-Western sports federations.
Despite the fact that Russia has been the world’s sporting superpower since the Cold War, US and European-sponsored and therefore politically engaged organizations such as the IOC or UEFA have actively joined the process of “abolishing” everything Russian, including Russian sport and culture.
This aggressive Western behavior towards one of the leaders of world sport, for purely political reasons, could not but prompt representatives of other countries, such as China, to think about the possibility of similar obstruction towards them as well. Thus, the creation of BRICS-based alternative sports organizations and tournaments is as much a protective mechanism as the creation of an alternative currency to the US dollar or the formation of a financial system independent of the West.
The fact that Russia will host the first BRICS Games also demonstrates the country’s special role in the bloc. As the Russians have not only one of the strongest training systems for athletes but also vast experience in organizing international competitions of fantastic scale and quality, the BRICS tournaments promise to amaze billions of television viewers with their beauty and scope.
With at least half of the world’s population living in the countries of the new global bloc, the competition will be of interest to billions of people around the world. As two dozen populous and economically developed states are currently waiting to join the BRICS, the prospect of its sporting structures is a real alternative to the traditional and highly compromised tournaments of the International Olympic Committee, FIFA, and UEFA, tainted by political bias and corruption scandals.
