“Russians continue to play as if nothing ever happened”

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Elina Switolina (28) can’t anymore. “I no longer have the moral strength to fight them,” the Ukrainian professional tennis player told the Kyiv Post, a newspaper in her home country. It is about sports officials, about politics and war, and about the fact that Russians and Belarusians are allowed to continue playing tennis as neutral athletes on the professional tour, even though the Putin regime has been waging a war of aggression against Ukraine and Belarus for a year now and dictator Lukashenko supports big neighbours. “I hope we can change that. It’s clearly not fair. Russian athletes have the opportunity to continue playing as if nothing ever happened. And our athletes are dying for our country.”

Every match against an opponent from Russia or Belarus is “tormentation”, says Svitolina’s compatriot Marta Kostjuk (20), also a tennis professional and recently in the news because she won the final of the WTA tournament in Austin (USA). ) had refused to shake hands with her Russian opponent.

Russe Schubenkov: “I did my job”

Only one seemed to have missed the headlines. IOC President Thomas Bach (69) said mid-week that it actually works quite well when Russians and Belarusians and Ukrainians are on the same tennis tour.

Among other things, he justified the recommendation of the International Olympic Committee to the world sports federations to allow athletes from Russia and Belarus back in the future if they compete without a flag and anthem, do not express themselves kindly to Putin and are not supported. by the military. After all, it is discriminatory if Russians are excluded just because they are Russians. “As an athlete, I have devoted my whole life to this sport and have always done my job,” said Russian Sergei Schubenkow (32), 2015 world champion in the 110 meters hurdles and two-time Olympic participant, at the beginning of the year of the Reuters agency. “And now I’m being told, ‘You’re a good guy, but we don’t need you.'”

Kostyuk: “We have been trying to ban Russia for a year”

Kostjuk and her compatriots hope that this will soon also be the case in tennis. She reveals what has been going on in the background for months. “We have not done this publicly so far,” said the number 38 of the WTA world rankings, who won her first title at WTA level in Austin. “But we have been trying to ban athletes from Russia and Belarus from our sport for a year now.”

Without success. And it gets even harder. The Ukrainians lost their last ally on the tennis tour in recent days: Wimbledon. On Friday it was announced that the All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC), host of the prestigious Grand Slam tournament, wants to admit players from Russia and Belarus in 2023. Unlike last year, when the Russians had to stay outside.

English yield to international pressure

“We continue to strongly condemn the invasion of Russia,” said AELTC President Ian Hewitt. “It was an extremely difficult decision that we did not take lightly.” It means that stars like Daniil Medvedev, Andrei Rublev, Aryna Sabalenka and Daria Kasatkina can now compete at Wimbledon, that world ranking points are once again up for grabs at Wimbledon – and that the British Lawn Tennis Association (LTA) is still a member of the ATP and WTA tour continues. If the British had stuck to their position from last year, they would have faced expulsion. Of course the pressure was great. “It would undoubtedly have been very painful if the LTA were no longer part of the two tours,” LTA boss Scott Lloyd told the BBC.

The conditions imposed on the Russians resemble those of the IOC. And so the Ukrainians slowly lose heart. “Your most common argument is that sport and politics belong separately,” Switolina says of the officials. “They say athletes have nothing to do with politics. I’ve had so many meetings with various Olympic Committee officials and tennis organizations that I honestly don’t do it anymore. They don’t want to face the truth,” said the former world number 3.

Great chaos threatens

Since the IOC recommendation, the scenario that has been a reality in tennis for a year is also getting closer to other sports. There is a threat of more desperate athletes from Ukraine. And maybe chaos soon. “We have decided that Ukrainian athletes will only be allowed to participate in Olympic qualifiers where Russians are not allowed,” Ukrainian minister Oleg Nemchinov said on Friday.

This could eventually lead to “neutral” Russian athletes competing for medals at the Paris Olympics in 15 months, but not Ukrainians. Do Bach and the officials of world sport really want that? This discussion will probably take longer.

Source : Blick