sport.Fr/Other. Three-time synchronized swimming champion Alexandra Patskevich recalled how the Russians played without a national flag at the Tokyo Olympics.

Recall that due to the sanctions of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), Russia was prohibited from performing using national symbols.

“Very often before the Olympics, I heard questions, received comments on the subject of why go there at all, if they were not waiting for us there, if we were deprived of the flag. But depriving an athlete of the opportunity to participate in the Olympics is equivalent to death. You have lived in sports all your life, you have lost a lot, as a child you had no vacations, hobbies, you worked from an early age, you were rarely home, but you knew you would have the opportunity to go to the Olympics and show yourself,” Patskevich quotes TASS.

It should be noted that Patskevich, together with Alla Shishkina, Svetlana Romashina, Svetlana Kolesnichenko, Maria Shurochkina, Vlada Chigireva, Marina Golyadkina and Polina Komar, as part of the ROC synchronized swimming team, won the “gold” of the Games Tokyo Olympics. .