2013 World Long Jump Champion Alexander Menkov after finishing his performance at the Russian Cup in Bryansk, he told how his focus on watching international starts changed due to the suspension of Russian athletes.
Russian athletes are not allowed to participate in the stages of the “Diamond League” due to the situation in Ukraine. Menkov on Friday at the Bryansk tournament became fourth with a score of 7.74 m.
– Do you see the stages of the Diamond League?
– Not. I gave up on this whole world sport, because if they don’t want to see me, I don’t want them either. I don’t care when I’m not there. If I was there, it would be interesting, but now it doesn’t matter – who, what, how. Let them jump as much as they can. It would be understood that I would go there, catch fire and start working in a completely different way. And now I work, it seems, at full strength, but emotionally I still crumble. It’s hard to explain, but it’s very hard to understand that you won’t get anywhere anyway, even if you jump nine meters.
– Especially since you already had a bad story with the European Championship in Berlin in 2018.
– Then I jumped on Znamensky 8.41, who became the leader of the world season, but I was not invited to the European Championship, they did not give me neutral status. The winning number there was 8.25, and even the world ranking leader’s golden number came from another person, because my result was not counted as the best of the season, for lack of neutral status. This is very insulting, – said Menkov “”.
Due to sanctions imposed by the World Athletics Association, Russian athletes can only participate in international competitions after obtaining neutral status as individuals.
Source : MatchTV
