World Climbing in Riyadh: Neutrality, Applied Selectively

Neutrality is a convenient fiction—one of those formulas that lets international federations keep the machine running—calendars, rules, podiums, press releases—as if geopolitics were just background noise. You take down flags, cut the anthems, invent “neutral” statuses, and tell yourself you’ve restored a clean, sanitized space where sport can keep presenting itself as a moral timeout in a world that isn’t one. It’s an appealing idea. It’s also a practical one.

World Cup - World Climbing 2025 - Chamonix © David Pillet

World Climbing’s latest statement (formerly the IFSC) is short. In that format, every sentence matters. It announces the lifting of the suspension on the Russian and Belarusian federations, reaffirms the policy of “neutral” athletes, specifies that no events will be held in Russia or Belarus—and then, almost as an aside, like a routine administrative note, it adds that the 2026 General Assembly will take place in Riyadh next April, with a session dedicated to the role of sport and international federations in the global geopolitical context.

In other words: we’re going to debate neutrality and geopolitics from Riyadh. The setting is already doing the talking.

Weeks ago, we reached out to World Climbing about “neutral” licenses and what this policy actually looks like on the ground—criteria, guardrails, red lines. So far, our message has gone unanswered.

Riyadh 2026 doesn’t come out of nowhere. It extends a trajectory.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: a state that doesn’t just host sport, but uses it—organizes it, funds it, stages it—as a strategic tool of power. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund, manages more than $900 billion in assets. It pours money into European soccer, Formula 1, professional golf, a steady stream of “mega-events,” the 2034 World Cup. This industrial-scale prestige project has a name—sportswashing—because it’s not just national enthusiasm. It’s image policy. And in this case, “image” isn’t a superficial concern. It’s diplomacy.

We’ve already watched this dynamic play out with the Neom Beach Games: a controversial event, athletes taking different stances, a cautious federation, and a massive political project in the background. Riyadh 2026 doesn’t come out of nowhere. It extends a trajectory. And as often happens, what stands out isn’t only what gets decided—it’s how those decisions are left hanging in a fog, with no explanation, no doctrine, no story.

The problem is that neutrality, once it becomes a tool of governance, always comes with blind spots.

Saudi Arabia: 196 executions in 2022 and at least 172 in 2023, according to Amnesty International. A death penalty applied at a pace that should be enough, on its own, to make the idea of a “neutral venue” hard to defend. Women’s rights activists arrested and sentenced, sometimes under anti-terrorism laws. Opponents imprisoned for what they post on social media. Same-sex relationships criminalized and therefore subject to criminal penalties, within a legal system where punishments can be extreme. And then there is the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 inside a consulate in Istanbul—a political killing that stopped being a mere “international news item” a long time ago, and that U.S. intelligence services and the UN have attributed to an operation approved at the highest levels of the state.

Institutions choose procedural order over moral order; the moment “neutral” isn’t manufactured to protect sport, but to protect the continuity of a system

You can argue endlessly about which outrage should rank first. What you can’t do is pretend all of this is just scenery.

This is where the staging starts to feel close to obscene: athletes are told to be neutral, to show up without symbols, to carry the weight of compromises in the name of universality—while the governance of international sport accepts the welcome on offer, and treats that choice as a simple logistics detail. Neutrality becomes a discipline imposed on individuals, and flexibility granted to institutions. It regulates bodies, not money. It clears flags off podiums, but makes plenty of room for the billions that set the terms backstage.

We’ve seen the same mechanism in different forms: the moment institutions choose procedural order over moral order; the moment “neutral” isn’t manufactured to protect sport, but to protect the continuity of a system; the moment the debate over values becomes a communications exercise—hosted in a place that contradicts what it claims to question.

This isn’t about fantasizing a pure sport, untouched by the world. It’s about finally admitting that neutrality isn’t the absence of politics. It’s politics. And the more it’s waved around like a magic charm, the more it turns into an alibi.