Olympic champion, deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Svetlana Jourova told that she considers Russian tennis players hostages of the situation and therefore cannot give them a harsh assessment.
Former President of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC) Stanislav Pozdnyakov called the tennis players who will go to the Olympics in neutral status a “team of foreign agents.”
“I cannot give such harsh assessments to athletes. They have an excuse in this situation. Our tennis players are forced foreign agents. Considering that they live abroad, receive funding from abroad, etc. But according to our budget code, we cannot pay for their participation in Grand Slam tournaments, because they are commercial. And our tennis players can only qualify for the Olympic Games thanks to them; they can only earn rankings in commercial tournaments, which they pay for with their own money from the sponsors they find. Most often these are not Russian, but foreign sponsors.
I understand if we have them fully funded. We could then say: “Why are you still receiving money from the West? But tennis players and their sport are hostage to this situation. It’s built that way.
Calling them to some sort of civic stance? They think their sport has nothing to do with the country. It is therefore extremely difficult to call on them to do something. We must appeal to the one who has funding from Russian taxpayers.
But tennis players don’t speak badly of the country. When they start doing this in interviews, saying something, then, probably, they will fall into the category of foreign agents, like our stars who left. But so far I haven’t heard anything bad about Russia from them,” Zhurova told .
The IOC announced in December 2023 that it would allow Russian athletes who successfully qualified for the 2024 Olympics to have individual neutral status without a flag, anthem or other national symbol. The IOC also banned the participation of athletes associated with security forces or who have expressed support for the SVO.
The Paris Summer Olympics will take place from July 26 to August 11.
Source : MatchTV
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