The World Aquatics Championship, which begins next week in the capital of Qatar, will feature more than 2,600 swimmers from 190 countries. As is already a trend in any international sporting event, there will be no Russians.
After an edition without the presence of Russia or Belarus in the also World Aquatics Championship, held last year in Fukuoka, FINA (now called World Aquatics) had decided to readmit Russian and Belarusian swimmers as neutral, under certain conditions such as not supporting Russia in the war against Ukraine, abstaining from national anthems and flags and complying with anti-doping requirements. Similar to what was established by the vast majority of International Federations, after the International Olympic Committee recommended that each governing body work on authorizing athletes from those two sanctioned countries.
In this regard, the World Aquatics Global Integrity Unit approved a list of athletes, leaders, referees and support staff who could participate in international tournaments as neutral. Among the athletes, there was only one Russian: Ivan Girev, silver medal in the 4x200 freestyle in Tokyo 2020. However, Girev did not register to be in the World Cup, a competition -of course- guaranteed to register qualifying marks for Paris 2024.
Once registrations are closed, only five neutral athletes appear on the list, all of them Belarusians: three belong to the racing swimming category and one to artistic swimming.
In December, Kliment Kolesnikov, Olympic runner-up in the 100 backstroke and bronze in the 100 freestyle, had already announced that he would not be in the Olympic event, since he considered the conditions imposed to compete as a neutral to be unacceptable: “There are those who are willing to accept these conditions from international federations and compete. I’ll be happy for them if they do. I can’t accept this,” he said.
In this scenario, just under six months before Paris 2024, three of the sports that put the most medals at stake in the Olympic event are still without Russia’s presence in their international tournaments: athletics, gymnastics and swimming. World Athletics has already confirmed, through a statement and reinforced by President Sebastian Coe himself, that they will not admit Russian and Belarusian athletes under any circumstances. In the case of gymnastics, in recent days the FIG published the list of authorized gymnasts and none are from Russia, only representatives from Belarus appear.
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