According to The Associated Press, the Russian government is considering implementing a rule banning its athletes from competing in more than two Olympics over the course of an athlete’s career.
The bill being submitted cites the specific example of Russian figure skater Yevgeny Plushenko’s pulling out from the individual figure skating competition in 2014 Sochi due to injury after already competing in the team event. The purpose of this potential law limiting participants to two Olympics total, therefore, is to avoid injury-prone athletes (such as Plushenko) from taking up Olympic roster spots that could have been granted to younger candidates.
If the proposal does indeed proceed, Russian pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva and hockey standout Alex Ovechkin would be unable to compete in Pyeongchang’s edition of the Games in 2018 (NBCOlympics).
More athlete turnover means more athletes have to be drug tested and institutional control will be that much more difficult. Maybe if their athletes didn’t juice they wouldn’t get injured as much.
It is an ambit bill by Vladimir Wildmanovsky – Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party (40 seats ).It’s specific roots are in the Ice Skating Nobs deciding to have a new showcase teams event first up but not allowing extra places from those earnt as a nation in competition at the previous worlds.
Yet another example of sport wanting flamboyancy & entertainment value at the expense of athlete health.There is nobody but nobody like Plushenko but he could not back up for the individual , nor would he shine so brightly in the colder atmosphere of the singles comp. ( i can’t remember who won ). It isn’t just age , Yulia rose to stupendous heights with her Schindlers List skate… Read more »
and concerns of a part of Russian society.
This will probably never happen, but it would mean no Yulia Efimova… oh what a shame.
This has to be the stupidest thing I’ve read all day by far (the Russian proposal, not the article itself).
It would just screw things around. Everyone under 18 wouldn’t even bother to make a team, because they’d want to do it later.
Not to mention, it would just dilute the competition. I’m all for making the level of competition in the Olympics as high as possible and including as many of the best in the world. However, these days half of “the best in the world” has already gone to two or more Games.
Let’s hope such an awful idea never gets any traction worldwide.
Will we see a surge of athletes looking to represent other countries? Swimmers can have “longer than 2 Olympic” career (swimming in general is less injury prone) as long as their times are still competitive. Just come to mind now – glad that Arkady Vyatchanin is representing Serbia so he can go to his third Olympic.
Thank God their audience is the IOC and not FINA. So silly.
With this logic, an athlete like Phelps would have been done after Athens, and would ‘only’ have 6 Olympic medals to his name rather than 22
And certainly no 2008 free relay… Lezak and Phelps both would have been prohibited from competing.
It doesn’t even make any sense… so during their first two games athletes are bulletproof and not injury prone?