"It looks as wild as possible." The act of the head coach of the Ukrainian biathlon team caused a scandal. Video

Head coach of the Ukrainian men's biathlon team Nadiia Bielova gave an interview in Russian on Suspilne.Sport. The 64-year-old native of Petropavlovsk (Kazakhstan), who lives in Kyiv, gave a short commentary before the start of the men's short individual race at the 1st stage of the World Cup in Kontiolahti, Finland.

At the same time, Bielov's speech was not subtitled in Ukrainian and was not translated.

"[Bielova] doesn't know how to speak Ukrainian, and it looks as wild as possible. Just like the fact that Suspilne thinks we should understand this language without translation. The national team's results are good. But still, the coach of the national team should give comments on camera in Ukrainian," public figure Vadym Pozdniakov wrote on Facebook.

Fans in the comments were outraged by the situation and demanded that both Bielova and the broadcaster be fined.

The language ombudsman Taras Kremin also commented on the incident.

"Ukrainian is the language of sports. It is strange to me that she did not take into account the guidance from the Ministry of Youth and Sports and violated the terms of the contract because there is a requirement to use Ukrainian during briefings, meetings, and other public events as an official," Kremin said in an interview with UP.Life.

Suspilne explained the incident by saying that it was a live broadcast from the scene.

"The coach's commentary was recorded close to the start of the event itself. Given that the broadcasts are made directly at the competition site and broadcast promptly, there is no time and technical capacity to duplicate or counteract the translation," UP.Life quoted a representative of the TV company as saying.

Reference: Nadiia Bielova is a Soviet and Ukrainian biathlete, 1986 World Biathlon Champion in the relay, and participant of the Olympic Games, World Championships, and World Cup biathlon stages. After retiring in 1995, she switched to coaching.

As OBOZ.UA previously reported, three representatives of the Ukrainian national team finished in the top 15 in the short individual race in Kontiolahti. Vitalii Mandzyn took 4th place, Dmytro Pidruchnyi was tenth, and Anton Dudchenko rounded out the top 15. This was our country's best performance of the season.

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