Olympic cross-country skiing champion Veronika Stepanova in her column on , she said that a year ago the chances of Russians returning to international competitions were higher than today.
Russian skiers suspended from international competitions due to the situation in Ukraine. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced in January that it would consider admitting to world starts neutral Russian and Belarusian athletes who did not actively support the CBO. At the moment, there are no specific criteria for possible admission. FIS committee meetings will be held in Dubrovnik (Croatia) from 3 to 5 May.
– Apparently, we won’t be going to the World Cup in the near future.
A year ago there were more opportunities, but now the opponents of our participation have increased their influence. I think it’s about the endless campaign against everything Russian in the Western media. If they had “covered” the Americans or the Israelis in the same vein, then the Scandinavian athletes would have refused to compete with them. As my coach Yegor Sorin aptly put it in an interview: “If I read and listened to this every day, I would also be against Russia’s participation.”
Even if the International Olympic Committee finally admits that it was wrong from the start and invites us to come back, it will not change much in cross-country skiing. About two-thirds of all IOC member countries are in favor of Russia’s participation, but there are hardly any ski countries among them.
Even if the IOC still issues a recommendation to lift the restrictions, for us Russian skiers it will only be a moral victory,” Stepanova wrote in a column on .
shows Alfa-Bank Russian Ski Championship (March 18-26, Tyumen region). Watch live broadcasts of the tournament on the federal channel and thematic channels of the holding, as well as on the sites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.
Source : MatchTV
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