"This is impossible": another Russian team withdraws from the 2024 Olympics

Representatives of the Russian national swimming team will not compete at the 2024 Olympic Games, which will be hosted by Paris, France, this summer. However, as is the case in the aggressor country, the decision to boycott is not announced by the athletes themselves, but by team coaches or heads of federations.

The decision was made for the swimmers by the president of the Russian Swimming Federation, Vladimir Salnikov, who said this in an interview with the propaganda channel Match TV. He called the Games in Paris a "page turned" and accused the International Olympic Committee (IOC) of allegedly unfair conditions for admission to the tournament.

"The conditions that exist do not allow us to perform at the Games in the way we should have. So this is a page turned. There are some things that are insurmountable, such as selection based on sportsmanship. We used to send the best of the best to international competitions based on the results of the selection of the best of the best. In these conditions, this is impossible. There is also a lack of symbolism, plus other factors that make it impossible for our athletes to feel equal to other participants," Salnikov said.

Before that, the head coach of the Russian national swimming team, Sergey Chepik, called the Olympics a tournament of "NATO countries and their minions." In turn, Olympic champion Yevgeny Rylov, who took part in the Z-concert in March 2022 in Luzhniki, was the only athlete to publicly announce his refusal to go to the 2024 Games. And former speed skater Svetlana Zhurova accused the IOC of humiliating Russians and treating them "like second-class citizens."

As OBOZ.UA reported, the day before it became known that Russian rowers refused to participate in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris. And the governor of Crimea Sergey Aksyonov ordered athletes from the occupied peninsula to refuse to travel to the French capital.

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