Penn State-based wrestler Kyle Snyder’s chief rival was banned from the Olympics. The Games rarely are just about the games.

PARIS — The world intrudes. At the Olympics, it always does. As recently as three weeks ago, Kyle Snyder could anticipate that, if he managed to reach the gold-medal match again here in 97 kg men’s freestyle wrestling, he would likely face a familiar and respected foe.

He and Abdulrashid Sadulaev — the defending Olympic champion from Russia — have a history, one that dates to the 2017 world championships … in, of all places, Paris. Snyder beat Sadulaev then, 6-5, in their first matchup. The loss was Sadulaev’s first in four years. The victory gave Snyder both his second world title and cause to claim bragging rights over any or all of his competitors. At 20 years old, fresh from the 2016 Summer Games in Rio, where he became the youngest U.S. wrestler ever to win an Olympic gold medal, he could look around and fairly wonder whether he had a real rival anywhere on the planet.

Only Sadulaev came back to beat him by fall at the 2018 worlds and to shut him out, 6-0, in the championship bout in the 2020-21 Tokyo Olympics, and sandwiched between those losses was Snyder’s bronze medal at the 2019 worlds. That run of relative setbacks was disappointing enough to Snyder that, in 2019, he decided to make a significant change to his practice, his preparation, and his day-to-day life.

Having won three NCAA championships at Ohio State, still living in Columbus, he relocated to State College to train with Penn State coach Cael Sanderson and his brother and associate, Cody. Cael Sanderson, of course, is a giant in the sport: He went 159-0 during his wrestling career at Iowa State, and since 2009, he has coached the Nittany Lions to 11 national titles. Snyder moved into his basement. These are wrestlers, after all. The more spartan and intimate the setting, the better.

“Cody said, ‘It’ll be great. Coach Cael can really help you with your mentality,’ and I was like, ‘I want to work on my dang technique. My mentality is fine,’” Snyder said Thursday. “But he actually did help me with my mentality. He’s really good at making people enthusiastic and happy and providing them with all the things they need to improve. He’s very calm, and he’s really a great technician, too.”

In September 2022, Snyder won his first world championship in five years, and he missed the chance to take on Sadulaev again at the ‘23 Worlds in the bronze-medal bout when Sadulaev withdrew with a neck injury. So here was Paris in the near distance, Snyder and Sadulaev both turning 28 before the Games’ beginning, in their primes, and on another collision course …

In early April, United World Wrestling, the sport’s international governing body, determined that Sadulaev could not compete in the European Olympics qualifying event. The International Olympic Committee had banned Russia from these Olympics last year for its instigation of war against Ukraine. But the IOC had left the door open for Russian-born athletes to compete in Paris under an “individual neutral athlete” standard: An athlete could not compete with flags or with their national anthem and could not walk in the opening ceremonies parade.

United World Wrestling’s eligibility panel found “new information about [Sadulaev’s] support of the Ukraine-Russia war and that he is still officially declared a member of” Dynamo Moscow, a sports club with ties to Russian leadership. The panel’s decision, according to UWW, was based on “thorough background and social media checks” and “comprehensive vetting reports provided by an independent and private intelligence service provider.”

Too often in its past, the IOC has not gone far enough in acknowledging and acting against tyranny and terrorism. Avery Brundage was happy to have Berlin and Adolf Hitler host the 1936 Summer Olympics and couldn’t be bothered to pause the 1972 Games for more than a day after the massacre of 11 Israeli team members at the hands and guns of Black September. Russia hosted the Winter Olympics just 10 years ago, and Beijing has become maybe the IOC’s favorite host city, the persecution and genocide of Uyghurs by China’s Communist government apparently not worth damnation.

» READ MORE: Three Philadelphia athletes felt the ripples of evil from the massacre at the 1972 Munich Olympics

Banning those who allegedly support Russia’s invasion, though, is a trickier matter. It is one thing to punish a nation for its policies. It is another to punish an athlete for his or her thoughts, no matter how offensive and reprehensible those thoughts might be. There’s no slipperier slope, and Snyder was wise enough Thursday to treat the subject delicately, in part because he and Sadulaev are friendly enough to stay in contact with each other.

“I would have loved for Sadulaev to be in my weight class,” Snyder said. “You want to go against the best guys.”

“They have a mutual respect,” U.S. men’s coach Bill Zadick said. “He’d want him to be here. But ultimately, Kyle loves to wrestle. He loves to struggle. He’s going to go out and do his best, and hopefully he’ll shine.”

Zadick, who has been the U.S. men’s freestyle coach since 2016, doesn’t speak to his wrestlers much about such global goings-on, even those that might affect them or their prospective opponents.

“We talk about qualities and characteristics that help you perform,” he said, “being relaxed and alert and calm to where you make quality decisions and reflect your life philosophy: ‘I want to represent myself the way I want to represent myself. I want to do things for my family and my country and my teammates to represent them.’ With the externals, when you start thinking of things outside the circle, it invites external pressures that don’t influence the outcome, or you can invite them in where they do influence the outcome in a negative way.”

For the athletes here, it comes back to that: to the mat, to the court, to the pool, to the tunnel in which they place themselves to perform in a moment that means everything to them. Kyle Snyder’s first bout at 97 kg, his first step toward what could be another gold medal, is scheduled for Aug. 6. He will do all he can to keep the world away in the meantime.