Former world-famous boxer Vitaly Klitschko, currently mayor of besieged Kiev, stands with a heavy machine gun on barricades and fights for his city. Many Ukrainian Olympians received a call-up order as soon as they returned from the Winter Games in China. “Politics does not belong in sports, it is a cliché from the ideal world, politics goes into sports without an invitation,” sports journalist Robert Záruba commented on Twitter on Friday evening, saying that the sports world must logically stand up for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Violation of the Olympic Truce
The strongest reaction came from the International Olympic Committee on Friday afternoon. The organization, which ended the Beijing Winter Games less than a week ago, has called on sports federations around the world to either cancel their actions on Russian and Belarusian territories (from which invasive troops also attacked Ukraine) – or relocate them elsewhere. At the same time, the committee called on the organizers not to play the anthems of both countries.
The reason for such a tough stance is the fact that Russia and Belarus, among other things, broke the so-called Olympic Truce. That was not to end until March 20, when a week had passed since the end of the Paralympics, which is now to follow the classic Olympics in Beijing. The Olympic Truce is not a common custom. It is a binding resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly last December with the consent of all member states, including Russia and Belarus.
The Czech Olympic Committee also joined the protest. Its boss, Jiří Kejval, condemned the “aggressive and inexcusable steps of the Russian Federation” and offered help to athletes in a personal letter to his Ukrainian counterpart, formerly phenomenal pole vaulter Sergei Bubek. However, Kejval would not apply the principle of collective guilt and not forbid Russians from competing in international competitions. Filip Neusser, head of the National Sports Agency and Kejval’s frequent opinion rival, disagrees. On Friday, he called on Prime Minister Petr Fiala to promote the idea of excluding all Russian clubs and national teams from international competitions.
So far, only individual races are canceled. On Friday, Czech cross-country skiers Nikol Kučerová and Daniel Paulus refused to qualify for the Sunny Valley race near Ekaterinburg. In the end, only the domestic Russians took part in the qualification – before the International Ski Federation canceled the race, as did all the other World Cup competitions, which were to take place in Russia by the end of the season.
Russia has also lost hosting this year’s Champions League final. UEFA decided on Friday that the May match will move from St. Petersburg to Paris. At the same time, clubs and national teams from Russia and Ukraine must play this year’s home games on neutral ground.
The organizers of the Formula 1 race canceled the Russian Grand Prix in Sochi in September. This year’s car race is scheduled to begin next weekend with tests for all cars in Barcelona. The Haas stable, sponsored by the Russian company Uralkali – already owned by the father of one of its pilots Dmitry Mazepin – will set off on the track with covered sponsorship colors on their formulas, which are based on the Russian tricolor.
And speaking of sports business: Sazka, Tipsport and Chance have withdrawn all bets on Russian competitions from their offers. Fortuna kept them in the offer, but will send all the profits from them to Ukraine.
Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!
The reactions of athletes and their fans are also increasing. Already on Thursday evening, the Prague football team Slavia entered the domestic retaliation with the Fenerbahce Istanbul club in the opening yellow jerseys with the inscriptions “We stand behind Ukraine”. After the winning match in the Continental League, the thanks to the domestic boiler were conducted by Slavia defender Taras Kačaraba, who listened as the whole stadium chanted the name of his home country “Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine!”.
He subsequently told sports reporters that it was “the worst day of his life” for him when he learned of the Russian invasion that morning. Sympathy for Ukraine was also expressed in Friday’s hockey match by Sparta Prague fans, who created an emotional choreo in the form of the Ukrainian flag in the auditorium.
The Ukrainian athletes themselves are currently trying to orient themselves in the confusing situation that occurred just a few days after many of them returned from the Olympics in China. The local biathlon national team, which withdrew from the remaining three World Cup races, was the first to decide to end the season prematurely.
The Finnish club Jokerit then withdrew from the Russian Continental Hockey League. On Friday, he decided not to enter the first round of the KHL playoffs, in which he was to compete with the Moscow Spartak. So he automatically advanced and his players took a demonstrative photo of the training in support of President Vladimir Putin.
At the same time, the Finnish Hockey Association has decided to remove comments on the biggest players in Finnish history from the iconic Hartwall Arena in Helsinki, where the Jokerit plays: the hall is owned by entrepreneurs from Putin’s narrow circuit. The International Hockey Federation will address its position on Russia at Monday’s meeting.
The Polish national football team announced on Saturday that it will not play in the March match of the playoff qualification for advancing to the World Cup against Russia due to the attack of Russian troops on Ukraine. The head of the Polish association, Cezary Kulesza, wrote this on Twitter. It is not yet clear what the consequences of this decision will be.
However, there are also reports of a much more lenient approach by sports federations to Russia. The International Volleyball Federation, for example, announced on Friday that it is definitely not planning to cancel this year’s World Cup in Russia and that “everything is going according to plan”. Euphemistically speaking, the International Basketball Federation is still cautious. When the Czech basketball players decided to support Ukraine with a blue-and-yellow ribbon on their jerseys and hoisted the Ukrainian flag during Sunday’s upcoming qualifying match for the Pardubice World Cup against Bulgaria, the federation banned them due to “breaking the rules”.
Instead, she offered the athletes to declare a minute’s silence before the match and announce that she was being held as an unspecified “victim of events in Ukraine.” When asked by our national team manager Michal Šob, what will happen if he hoists the Ukrainian flag despite the ban, he replied: “We do not know, but we will find out.”
