A Ukrainian Olympic star has blasted Russian athletes for not speaking out over the war in his native country.
Skier Ivan Kovbasnyuk, who competed at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics, has been greatly affected by the ongoing war in his country, from both a personal and professional standpoint. The 29-year-old is unable to train at home in the Carpathian Mountains because war in the country has damaged the power grid so severely there's not enough energy to make the chairlifts operate.
As damage continues to be inflicted on Ukrainian soil, Kovbasnyuk has called on Russian athletes to do more to help end the war. “It's not fair when Ukrainian sportsmen don't have a chance to participate in the Olympics because they are dying on the battlefields while Russian athletes are just silently supporting (Vladimir) Putin's crime regime,'' Kovbasnyuk said after competing in the combined race at the Alpine skiing world championships on Wednesday.
“This is absolutely not OK,'' he added through a translator. “We will do everything in our powers to prevent them from being a part of the Olympic family again. And we will defend ourselves until the end, down to the last soldier, to the last person in Ukraine.'' He added: “We don't have training time. We don't have equipment. We don't have coaches. We don't have opportunities.
“We don't have anything right now. But that's the least of our problems. The biggest problem is back in our home country. So all I can do is just proudly represent my country in the way I can right now.'' The war has taken a psychological toll on Ivan Kovbasnyuk, who found it tough to focus on perfecting his craft, due to the violence in his country which has taken the lives of some loved ones.
“It's really hard psychologically for me to race here because a lot of my friends are fighting,'' Kovbasnyuk said after finishing 44th in the super-G portion of the combined. “A lot of my friends were already killed in this war. At least I'm here and proud of representing Ukraine. But it's super hard to think about skiing, about training, about anything, when your friends, your people, are dying back in Ukraine.''
The skier's comments came after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) stated their intentions to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete at the Paris Olympics next year. After President Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine last February, the IOC ordered organisers and international sports bodies not to invite or allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in international competitions.
However, the governing body appear to be making a U-turn as they met late last month to state they are exploring the potential for Russians to be allowed to compete as neutral athletes in Paris.
Last week the IOC announced it would "explore a pathway" to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete, adding that "no athlete should be prevented from competing just because of their passport". It added: “Governments must not decide which athletes can participate in which competition and which athletes cannot."
But IOC president Thomas Bach has since said that was only intended as a "protective" measure towards those athletes, and now insists they should not be discriminated against.
