has received a letter from Olympic champion Maria Lasitskene to IOC President Thomas Bach.
We publish the letter in the form in which it was received, without alterations or cuts.
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“There should be no penalties for someone who only has a passport from a certain country”
Bach
Mr Bach
My name is Maria Lasitskene. I am an Olympic high jump champion at Tokyo 2020. I don’t know if you know me, because based on your recent statements and decisions, you are already much closer to politics and further away from athletes and sport. professional in general.
But I remember very well how you turned a blind eye to the fact that the current IOC member, Sebastian Coe, did not allow me to participate in the 2016 Games simply because I was born in Russia. In the last seven years, in total, for about four years, I have not had the opportunity to participate in international competitions, although there have never been any complaints against me personally. Except for one thing… The International Association of Athletics Federations pulls an ace up its sleeve at every opportunity in the form of my Russian passport. And you let them off the hook. Now they start again, but directly at your suggestion.
“The rights of anyone who does not support military action must be respected in accordance with our rules and international law”
Bach
My main colleagues in the sector are Ukrainian girls, and I still don’t know what to say to them and how to look them in the eye. They, their friends and loved ones are going through what no human should be going through. I’m sure it was never meant to be. And no evidence will convince me otherwise. But you don’t know all this, you prefer not to delve into what athletes living in Russia think and how they live with what is happening in Ukraine. If you really cared about the fate of athletes, you wouldn’t demand that they speak out about it, but you would try to unite the world through sport. But you chose the easiest solution for you: remove everyone on the basis of citizenship.
“Aggression was shown against Russian athletes in a number of countries, and we could not guarantee their safety during international competitions… Our task is to keep the sport outside of political tendencies”
Bach
You say you fired the Russians because of concerns about our safety, but that’s not true. The performances of tennis players all over the world prove it once again. Fans fall in love with athletes not on a national basis, but because of what they demonstrate during competitions. Although, in my opinion, it is high time that the Olympic movement and sport in general abandon the use of national flags and anthems in all tournaments.
Any decision taken should bring results, but what you did did not stop the war, but, on the contrary, started a new one – close to sport, which is no longer possible to contain.
I have no doubt that you will not have the courage and dignity to remove the punishment of Russian athletes. After all, you will have to admit that during all these months you have violated the IOC charter and the charters of the international federations have changed from real documents to useless papers. But I ask you to stop absolving yourself of the responsibility for what is happening in the world of sport for so-called “taking care of Russian athletes”. The IOC President is not made to engage in such things.
Maria Lasitskene,
2020 Olympic champion, current three-time world champion
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Source : MatchTV
