Evgenia Chikunova: “It’s still good that they finally announced me, like everyone else”

World record holder Evgenia Chikunova told that she was even happy to no longer be announced during competitions as a double winner of the 2024 Olympic champions.

On Friday, Chikunova won the 50m breaststroke final at the Russian Short Course Swimming Championships in St. Petersburg. Earlier, Vice President of the Russian Swimming Federation Evgeny Korotyshkin told that Chikunova will no longer be officially announced at Russian competitions as a two-time winner of the 2024 Olympics.

Russian swimmers missed the Paris Games, while Chikunova, in the Russian Cup final, swam the 100 and 200m breaststroke faster than the winners of the 2024 Olympic Games at those distances, Tatyana Smith and Kate Douglass.

—How important is this victory to you? There were a lot of emotions afterwards.

— Yes, I am incredibly happy with my result. It was really surprising that I was able to break 30 seconds. Despite the fact that no matter how many times I swim the 50m breaststroke, it rarely happens. And we still don’t know exactly what influences this. It seems that in terms of health, I still swim the same way, but time passes. You can say that so far I haven’t made friends with the Poltos.

— How important is it that you performed well in the context of a temporary illness? You told that you had coronavirus three times in October.

– Yes, and it is important that after an illness I can show something. Although, to be honest, fifty dollars isn’t much of an indicator.

— Do you look at the results of foreign athletes?

“I don’t think about anyone’s results.” We have been playing in absentia for over two years now. And this time I tried to focus on myself, especially on a distance of 200m breaststroke.

Watch others? For health reasons I can’t do it yet. Because the foreign girls are in phenomenal shape, which is really far from me. Therefore, at the moment my reference point is my best seconds, which I want to achieve.

— How did you react to the fact that the federation stopped announcing you as a double winner of the Olympic champions?

— When I show up at the starting line, I don’t hear anyone announce me at all. I just think about how I can swim, what tactics the tactics should be, a few little things. In this regard, nothing has changed for me.

How to announce myself is the decision of the tournament organizers. In any case, it’s good that the federation remembers that I showed excellent results this summer in Yekaterinburg. But it’s probably still good that they will eventually announce me, like everyone else, without this unusual uniform, ”Chikunova told the correspondent.

Watch live broadcasts of the Russian Short Course Swimming Championship on and the holding’s channels, as well as on the websites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.

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