Athletes have competed as Independent Paralympians at the Paralympic Games for various reasons, including political transition, international sanctions, suspensions of National Paralympic Committees and compassion.
A Refugee Paralympic Team (following the model used by the IOC for its sponsored olympic team since 2016), is separated at the 2020 Summer Paralympics from the former Independent Paralympic Athletes.
The Russian Paralympic Committee, still suspended from the IPC and the IOC, was allowed to propose athletes, no longer competing as "independent" or "neutral" paralympians, but still with the supervision of the IPC. However, they did not compete under the name and with the national flag and anthem of Russia, but under the acronym RPC and with the Paralympic flag and anthem.
2022 Winter Paralympics
Athletes from Russia were scheduled to compete at the 2022 Winter Paralympics as Neutral Paralympic Athletes and athletes from Belarus as Paralympic Neutral Athletes. On 3 March 2022, both nations' athletes were banned from competing, reversing the previous decision to allow them to compete as neutrals.[4][5]
Russian athletes were previously scheduled to compete under the flag of the Russian Paralympic Committee as a result of doping-related sanctions. On 9 December 2019, the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned Russia from all international sport for a period of four years, after the Russian government was found to have tampered with lab data that it provided to WADA in January 2019 as a condition of the Russian Anti-Doping Agency being reinstated. On 26 April 2021, it was confirmed Russian athletes would represent the Russian Paralympic Committee, with the acronym 'RPC', at the 2020 Summer Paralympics and the 2022 Winter Paralympics.[6]
The Russian Paralympic Committee delegation was banned from participating in the 2022 Winter Paralympics after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in violation of the Olympic Truce.[7] On 2 March 2022, the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) decided that Belarusian and Russian athletes would be allowed to compete at the Games as neutral athletes with their results not counting in the medal standings.[8][9][10] The athletes would still have received medals during ceremonies.[11] As a result of criticism by several National Paralympic Committees, who threatened to boycott the Games, the IPC announced on 3 March 2022 that they would reverse their earlier decision, banning Russian and Belarusian athletes from competing at the 2022 Winter Paralympics.[5]
Before being banned from the Winter Paralymics, 71 athletes from Russia were expected to compete.[12][13] The athletes were scheduled to compete in all sports included in the programme of the Games.[14] In total, 12 athletes from Belarus were expected to compete.[15]
Pavel Rozhkov, who served as interim Russian Paralympic Committee (RPC) president in 2021, served as Chef de Mission of the Russian delegation.[13][16] In total, the Russian delegation consisted of ten alpine skiers, 33 skiers in biathlon and cross-country skiing, six snowboarders and the para ice hockey and wheelchair curling teams.[17][18][19]
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