President of the Russian Fencing Federation (FFR) and head coach of the national team Ilgar Mammadov on the air of “” responded to the claims of the deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Roman Teryushkova .
Teryushkov said the FFR had asked the International Fencing Federation (FIE) to allow Russian athletes to compete in a neutral status. The deputy was unhappy that the leaders of the organization were ready to speak without the Russian flag and anthem.
– Everyone must do their job. Roman Teryushkov began to deal with problems other than his own. Here you talk about sovereignty, but (at the Olympics) there was no flag or anthem in Tokyo either. But there is a victory, and that is the criterion in sport, the result. With these victories, we realize that we support our country.
There was no flag and anthem in Tokyo, there was Tchaikovsky’s music, but there were victories and our team’s great joy that we did even better than in Rio. And if we take history in general, when we did not participate in the 84th year at the Olympics in Los Angeles, these athletes became the winners and winners of Friendship-84. But who needs this friendship now, it’s far from the title of Olympic champion. A person who has never played sports is now wondering whether we should compete or not.
If the top leaders of the country tell us to compete, as we were told before the Olympics, then we competed. If we’re told not to play, we won’t. We have not submitted anything, we are not engaged in any correspondence with the international federation. Some of the executive committee members played a joke in the Western press. Unfortunately, our deputy picked up on this prank and started accusing us. Now, as a federation, we have taken legal action and we will fight,” Mammadov said on the air of the program “There is a theme!” on the TV Match channel.
Source : MatchTV
