The synchronized swimmer is perplexed how one can talk about “equal conditions” if Ukrainian athletes cannot even train normally
Ukrainian world and European champion in artistic swimming Marta Fedina shared her opinion about double standards in the position of international sports authorities regarding the admission of Russians to official competitions, in particular, the 2024 Olympics.
The synchronized swimmer is forced to train in Kharkov under regular enemy shelling and does not understand how one can talk about “equal conditions” for athletes from Ukraine and from a terrorist country.
“The first training session of the new year took place on January 2, but we were released early because of what happened. And this is understandable. And you know, at that moment I thought that they were allowing Russia to participate in competitions, although not in all types, but still – how can we even talk about this? And they are talking about some kind of equal conditions…”
“Even if we don’t talk about life outside of sports, about how many people today are left without their homes and simply without everything, we simply don’t have the same time for training.”
“And it’s not our fault, because we just prepare less than they do. We just can’t train. We currently do not have equal conditions for preparation. Not to mention morale and so on. And a new year began for us, but the old neighbors remained the same.”
“I believe that in general we should never allow it again in life, but here they are already talking about this year… They were talking there about 2030, 2028… And here they are allowing it already in 2024. This is at a time when we, Ukrainians, still need to survive in order to get to this Olympics.”
In 2023, Marta became a two-time champion of the Artistic Swimming World Cup, champion of the KS Superfinal, silver medalist of the KS stage and the European Games. At the end of the year, she was included in the rating of “50 main sports people in Ukraine-2023” from the Sport&Business Club.
Since the night of December 29, Russia has been massively shelling the territory of Ukraine with various types of weapons every day. According to the head of the NOC of Ukraine, Vadim Gutzeit, during the full-scale invasion, more than 400 Ukrainian athletes have already died, and about 500 sports facilities have been lost.
Early in the morning of February 24, 2022, Russia fired rockets and aerial bombardment of most Ukrainian cities, and then launched a full-scale military invasion. The war against Russia has continued for the 679th day.
Source: Sportarena
I’m Todderic Kirkman, a journalist and author for athletistic. I specialize in covering all news related to sports, ranging from basketball to football and everything in between. With over 10 years of experience in the industry, I have become an invaluable asset to my team. My ambition is to bring the most up-to-date information on sports topics around the world.
