In 2018, the game for third place in the World Cup was played in St. Petersburg’s Gazprom Arena. The 2022 Champions League final planned here has now been moved to the Stade der France in St. Denis near Paris.
Foto: imago images/Peter Kovalev
Russia’s attack is not only bringing death and destruction to Ukraine. In international sport, too, Putin’s attack on his western neighbor is causing a great deal of confusion. And in addition to all the world sports associations that courted Putin for so long and now have to clarify how they want to deal with competitions scheduled in Ukraine or Russia, athletes are of course also suffering from the war, first and foremost the Ukrainian ones.
On Thursday evening, for example, the Ukrainian biathletes announced the end of their season: The team around Dmytro Pidruchnyj, pursuit world champion of 2019, will stop training for the time being due to the imposition of martial law and will not take part in the remaining three World Cup weekends, said Lily Budsuljak, head of the biathlon Association FBU, on Facebook with.
The general mobilization that Ukraine announced on Friday night certainly plays an important role in this: All reservists and conscripts between the ages of 18 and 60 are now prohibited from leaving the country. Of course, this also applies to athletes. It is possible that the ski hunters will now be used on rifles for national defense. World boxing champions Vitaly and Wladimir Klitschko announced in a video message from Kiev that they would take up arms if the worst came to the worst.
Meanwhile, international attention in terms of sport is focused as usual on football, whose world association Fifa organized the World Cup in Russia in 2018 and is now hosting the follow-up tournament in Qatar in late autumn. In the European playoffs on the way to this World Cup in 2022, Poland, the Czech Republic and Sweden do not want to compete in Russia as scheduled. Poland is scheduled to play Russia in Moscow on March 24, but Fifa boss Gianni Infantino avoided a transfer until Friday afternoon: “I hope the situation will have been resolved by then.”
On the other hand, the European Football Union (Uefa) got rid of a much more pressing problem on Friday morning with a clear decision: At an extraordinary meeting in Nyon, they withdrew the Champions League final from the Russian Football Association, which was played on May 2nd in St. Petersburg’s Gazprom -Arena should be played. Instead of being played in Putin’s hometown, the final of the world’s most important club competition will now be played at the Stade de France – in the French town of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. In addition, Russian and Ukrainian football clubs are obliged to play their home games in Uefa competitions on neutral ground “until further notice”.
However, Uefa still found it somewhat difficult with the players’ anti-war commitments: when kickers from SSC Napoli and FC Barcelona gathered behind a “Stop War” poster at a Europa League game in Naples on Thursday evening, the TV director showed it scene not. The outrage on the internet was great.
At its extraordinary meeting, Uefa also kept a low profile on the question of how to deal with the main sponsor Gazprom in the future. The Russian state-owned company is a major Uefa sponsor until 2024 and would therefore also be present everywhere in Germany at the 2024 European Championship. Uefa made no decision on this on Friday.
Second division soccer team Schalke 04 acted somewhat more decisively in the matter of Gazprom. The pros of the Gelsenkirchen club will not wear the Gazprom lettering on their chests in the coming second division matchday. The volleyball Bundesliga club SSC Palmberg Schwerin behaves in a similar way and initially refrains from advertising the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline on the jersey of its women’s team. “Out of consideration for all partners involved, both parties agreed on Thursday to refrain from the Nord Stream 2 brand and company presence in the Palmberg Arena and on the jersey of the 1st Bundesliga team until further notice,” said one on Friday Association statement.
Everywhere in Germany there is a reaction to the war: the German Football League recommended a minute’s silence to the clubs in the 1st and 2nd Bundesliga for all games, and the German Olympic Sports Association advised its 90,000 clubs to do the same for the next competitions.
The wave of cancellations in sport has probably only just begun: On Friday, Formula 1 deleted the Grand Prix in Sochi from the racing calendar, where it was scheduled for September 25th. And the Ski World Association canceled all outstanding World Cups in Russia on Friday – “in the interest of the safety of all participants and to maintain the integrity of the World Cup”. Affected are ski crossers, cross-country skiers, ski jumpers and aerials starters, for whom alternative events are now to be organized. The German Ski Association had already decided on Thursday evening not to let its athletes compete in Russia or Ukraine.
Harsh criticism of Russia also came from the International Olympic Committee (IOC), which sharply condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine – as a breach of the Olympic Truce. The IOC said it was “deeply concerned” about the safety of the Olympic community in Ukraine. The so-called Olympic truce began on January 28, seven days before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Winter Games, and will end on March 20, a week after the conclusion of the Paralympics in China. On December 2, all 193 UN members passed the resolution on the Olympic Peace, which is said to have existed in ancient Olympia as an agreement between Greek tribes. According to this, the weapons for the Games rested 3000 years ago – three months before the competitions began until after all the athletes had finished their journey home.
Around Olympia, where in 2022 no Russian flags and anthems were allowed due to state-orchestrated doping and only one team Russian Olympic Committee was allowed, Vladimir Putin has now broken the Olympic peace for the third time. In 2008, Russia used force of arms to intervene in the Georgia conflict during the Beijing Summer Games. In 2014, just days after the Sochi Games, Russia annexed Crimea.
The Paralympic Games in Beijing are scheduled to begin in six days. President Andrew Parsons of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) spoke of a “really terrible situation” and great concern for the para-athletes from Ukraine. However, Valery Sushkevich, President of the Ukrainian Paralympic Committee, told the IPC on Thursday that his athletes would like to compete. “But bringing the team to Beijing will be a huge challenge,” said Andrew Parsons.
