Russian and Belarusian athletes have been barred from competing at the 2022 swimming world championships in June. The event, set to take place in Budapest, is taking a stand against the conflict by imposing sanctions on President Putin’s sports stars.
According to FINA, the sports’ international governing body, Russia has responded by removing all of its athletes from events for the rest of the year. "Following these decisions, FINA was informed by the Russian Swimming Federation of the withdrawal of all Russian aquatics athletes from all FINA events for the rest of this year," FINA’s statement read.
"FINA maintains its strongest condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. FINA also wishes to reiterate its commitment to supporting the Ukraine Swimming, Diving and Artistic Swimming Federation as they prepare for upcoming competitions."
The sanctions continued as Kazan, who were set to host the world short-course (25m) swimming championships this December, have now been stripped of that honour as a result of the country’s invasion of Ukraine. Russian swimmer and two-time Olympic champion Evgeny Rylov is also under investigation after his alleged attendance at a pro-war rally at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, led by Putin.
This is seen as a potential violation of FINA’s rules and Rylov said he would not compete at the World Championships in support of suspended athletes, hours before a ban on Russian swimmers was confirmed. "In connection with the current situation in the world, I would like to make a statement," said Rylov on Instagram . "As a sign of support for the Russian Paralympic athletes, as a sign of support for all Russian athletes who have been suspended from international competitions, I refuse to go to the 2022 World Championships this summer.
"I think that by losing competition, the development of sport is lost. No matter how sad it may sound, but sport cannot move forward without worthy competitors. Conclusions should be made by the federations about the direction in which they want to develop sports and whether Pierre de Coubertin wanted to see when he initiated the organisation of the Olympic Games, which were supposed to unite people."
In other sporting sanctions imposed, all Russian and Belarusian tennis players are currently competing as neutral athletes and their flags have been removed from all tennis programming and websites. Meanwhile, UK sports minister Nigel Huddleston was asked about the possibility of Russian players competing at Wimbledon this summer, and said Russian players should not be able to compete under the country's flag.
Huddlestone said: "We are looking and talking to various sports about this and what the response and requirements should be there. Absolutely, nobody flying the flag for Russia should be allowed or enabled. "We need some potential assurance that they are not supporters of Vladimir Putin and we are considering what requirements we may need to get some assurances along those lines. In short, would I be comfortable with a Russian athlete flying the Russian flag? No."
