Athletistic / Volleyball. The most successful coach in volleyball history, Russian Nikolai Karpol, believes that sanctions against athletes from Russia and Belarus were introduced because corrupt officials are at the helm of world sport.
“I think that sanctions against the Russians are not a sport. Corrupt sports leaders work for something completely different, they have completely different motivations and interests.
“I followed the Paris Olympics. I think the Russian volleyball team would definitely compete for medals there. They could have won them in the past, but we were a little less equipped, although at the Tokyo 2020 Games we still managed to beat the United States and China,” Karpol said, according to TASS.
Russian volleyball players have not participated in international tournaments since March 2022. Due to sanctions by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), only 15 Russians competed at the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris – in individual neutral status.
Nikolai Karpol, as the head coach of the USSR national team, is a two-time Olympic champion (1980 and 1988). He has a gold medal at the World Championships and three victories at the European Championships. In October 2009, Karpol was inducted into the Volleyball Hall of Fame. He trained 15 Olympic champions and more than fifty international masters of sports. Earlier, the 86-year-old mentor entered the Russian Book of Records after working at Uralochka for 50 years, which is the longest experience in a sports club in the country.
Source: Sport
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