“At the Friendship Games, Chinese divers will test the second and third teams” – Olympic champion Zakharov

Olympic diving champion Ilya Zakharov said in an interview with that the Friendship Games will be an opportunity for Chinese athletes to test their team for the 2028 Olympics.

The Friendship Games will take place in Moscow and Yekaterinburg in September 2024. The Los Angeles Olympic Games will take place in July 2028.

— The Russia-China diving match will defeat the interest of any Olympic tournament in your sport. But is it true that the Chinese are not particularly keen to organize such matches with us?

— We should have intersections at least at the BRICS Games. As it stands, the Chinese national team will not even have the second, but the 15th team in diving, which will be quite strong. So even if the Chinese don’t bring the best athletes to our tournaments, the diving competition will still be crazy.

— Who will China bring to the Friendship Games in September 2024, one month after the Paris Olympics? Although we will have a substantial prize fund – more than 4 billion rubles.

— The Chinese think about everything several years in advance. I think at the Friendship Games they will test the second or third team, knowing that by Los Angeles 2028 they could become the first. Today, they are undergoing a generational change. The guys I also competed with have already reached a certain peak, after which we have to finish slowly. The Chinese have already had a very good career. For them, everything usually goes well and everything is thought out,” Zakharov told .

Russian athletes have been suspended from participating in international competitions under the auspices of World Aquatics due to the situation in Ukraine.