They fought on the same side and together won Olympic gold, young men from Russia and a newly independent Ukraine, joined for one last medal-winning hurrah on a short-lived post-Soviet Unified Team at the 1992 Barcelona Games.
Now, former fencers Vadym Guttsait and Stanislav Pozdnyakov are on opposite sides of the war that Russia is waging on Ukraine. Both have risen to become senior sports administrators, respectively heading the Ukrainian and Russian Olympic committees. The nearly year-old invasion has utterly shredded what was left of their friendship and they're now fighting each other in a divisive and growing split within the Olympic movement over whether Russia and ally Belarus should be barred from next year's Paris Games.
