Olympic cross-country ski champion Veronica Stepanova in her column on , she said that her European friends and colleagues sympathized with the exclusion of Russian athletes from international tournaments, but that the country was doing a good job of organizing domestic competitions.
Russians and Belarusians have been suspended from International Ski Federation (FIS) competitions since March 2022 due to the situation in Ukraine.
— A year and a half ago, the “contacts in Europe” took pity on me. And they themselves, by the way, too – some counted on me and made a lot of money from me, but then it failed. But they also sympathized on a purely human level. From Europe, it really seemed to them that Russia would have no time for sports: they read newspapers and watched television. It was explained to them that Russia would not resist sanctions for long: transport problems, financial problems, almost starvation – what kind of sport is this?
But in reality everything turned out to be quite the opposite. At ski competitions in Khakassia and Khibiny last week, around 900 people raced in total. Does this sound like a crisis? In Russia, there are more skiers, more or less professional, than in the rest of the world combined. There are definitely more biathletes. No need to listen to the negativists and whiners on the Internet: we now have (almost) everything so that ambitious children, adolescents and young people can play sports. Otherwise, where do these teams of young skiers from all over Siberia come from, so that they don’t give me passes now during training at the top of Teya, they all want selfies? I don’t know about other sports, but skiing and biathlon have survived the “excommunication from world sports” or whatever some people call it quite calmly.
There was only one thing missing: a very big competition, so that everything happened like at the World Cup, and not in separate elements. And now such competitions are beginning to appear. Yes, for now in biathlon – but I hope you will soon hear other interesting news in this area. We are neither blocked nor stopped, we move forward, we develop! — wrote Stepanova.
On November 18 and 19 in Khanty-Mansiysk the International Club Biathlon League Cup (ILCL) took place, with the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes. For winning each of the four races, the biathletes received one million rubles.
On November 25 and 26, Khanty-Mansiysk will host the races of the first stage of the Alfa-Bank Russian Cup. Watch live broadcasts of the competition on the channel.
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
