PYEONGCHANG, South Korea (AP) — IOC board member Gian Franco Kasper apologized Thursday for comparing a ban on Russia from the 2018 Olympics to persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.
“It was an inappropriate and insensitive comment,” Kasper, the long-time International Ski Federation president, said in a statement.
The 73-year-old Swiss official had been speaking on the sidelines of an IOC board meeting in 2018 host city Pyeongchang.
Kasper compared a potential Olympic ban for Russia — as punishment for state-backed doping and cheating at the 2014 Sochi Games — with indiscriminate persecution by the Nazis.