Olympic champion Yevgeny Rylov explained the sanctions against him for taking part in a rally-concert in Luzhniki last year as a conspiracy. He expressed confidence that the International Swimming Federation (FINA) had disqualified him for nine months because it considered him a "significant personality".

Rylov said this in an interview with the propaganda outlet Russia Today. The Z-patriot also added that at the Tokyo Olympics, he won two events previously dominated by US athletes, which allegedly became another reason for punishing him for supporting the war.

"Of course, I assumed that someone would not like something, but I didn't expect it to be to such an extent. I did not think that I would be made into a plaything, so to speak. But it turned out that I am a very important person, even though I didn't think of myself as such. It turns out that I hurt the feelings of completely different people. And naturally, I was immediately taken up by them. By the way, I do not rule out that my two Olympic golds could have played a role. After all, I took them in events where the Americans had not lost since 1996. In the 100 metres, Kliment Kolesnikov and I simply destroyed them," Rylov said.

It should be noted that, in addition to the nine-month disqualification for publicly supporting the war in Ukraine, the swimmer lost his sponsorship contract with the world's leading equipment manufacturer.

As OBOZREVATEL previously reported, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko called international competitions without the participation of Russian athletes inferior.

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