One of Ukraine’s most decorated athletes was offered a spot at the Paris 2024 Olympics after being disqualified from the fencing world championships for refusing to shake hands with her Russian opponent.
Four-time Olympic and world champion Olga Kharlan offered to tap blades rather than shake hands after beating Russia’s Anna Smirnova, prompting a 45-minute protest from Smirnova, who was competing in Milan as an individual neutral athlete. According to International Fencing Federation rules, refusal to shake hands after a contest results in a black card and expulsion.
“I did not want to shake hands with this athlete, and I acted with my heart,” Kharlan said. “So when I heard that they wanted to disqualify me, it killed me so much that I was screaming in pain. I think I understand, like everyone else in this world, in a sane world, that the rules have to change because the world is changing.”
International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach was a former fencer himself, having won gold at the 1976 Olympics. Kharlan now appears to be the first fencer to qualify for Paris 2024.
“The war against your country, the suffering of the people in Ukraine, the uncertainty around your participation at the Fencing World Championships in Milan, the difficult inner conflicts you and many of your Ukrainian athletes may have and then the events which unfolded yesterday — all this is a roller coaster of emotions and feelings,” Bach wrote in a letter to the Ukrainian Olympic Committee. “It is admirable how you are managing this incredibly difficult situation, and I would like to express my full support to you.”
Ukraine Olympic Committee president shares a letter from IOC President Thomas Bach saying that fencer Olga Kharlan will be given an Olympic spot if she is unable to qualify for the Paris Games after her DQ from world championships. https://t.co/4juRc3cYMU pic.twitter.com/ICLlrlBvw5
— Nick Zaccardi (@nzaccardi) July 28, 2023
Ukrainian athletes’ refusal to shake hands with Russian competitors also surfaced earlier this month at Wimbledon, where Ukraine’s Elina Svitolina took part in the protest after winning a match against Russia’s Victoria Azarenka.
Russian and Belarusian swimmers are absent from this week’s World Aquatics Championships in Fukuoka, Japan, with World Aquatics extending sanctions into 2023 following their countries’ invasion of Ukraine last February. They are expected to be allowed to compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics as individual athletes under a neutral flag despite lacking formal invitations from the IOC.
Ukrainian sports minister Vadym Huttsait recently told Reuters that Ukraine “would be open to reversing” its threatened boycott of the Paris 2024 Olympics if Russian and Belarusian athletes compete under a neutral flag. Huttsait referred to the incident involving Kharlan as “an obvious provocation from the Russian side.”
Just to expand on Svitolina, she announced in advance that she would not be shaking the hands of any Russians or Belarusians. She did give them an acknowledgement with a nod following her matches though. I think she struck a good balance: she didn’t want the Russian media to be able to use photos of Russians and Ukrainians shaking hands, but she also didn’t ignore the athlete and disrespect them as an individual
Good for her. Great for the IOC allowing her to compete in Olympics if this DQ means she fails to qualify.
Silly rules. Any athlete should be allowed to not shake hands with a competitor, especially in a time of war, and it should work both ways.
The Ukrainian should have said “oops my bad, I thought he was Israeli”…..nobody would have said anything
The world needs new leadership.
These goofballs in Moscow, Kiev, Washington DC, London, & Beijing, along with a few other countries, have the world on the precipice of WWIII. The first 4 mentioned have taken us to a point where we’re one false flag or a mistake away from an exchange of nuclear weapons. World leadership is supposed to advance civilization, and not destroy it.
A peace agreement was on the table between Moscow and Kiev as early as April 2022. The United States & Britain made sure it didn’t happen. Power, control, and the hope of regime change via a proxy war is getting hundreds and thousands of people killed, and millions of Ukrainians dislocated…and the sociopathic… Read more »
Yes. It’s the same peace agreement that Hitler offered to Poland. All you have to do is “cease existing” and we will stop launching missiles at your civilian housing and infrastructure.
If it were that easy in Ukraine, it would not have stopped in Ukraine. In fact, Ukraine is the only thing between the world and WW3 right now.
No. Wrong. With the exception of regional conflicts in Chechnya and Georgia, Russia was zero threat to any of the European countries since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. No evidence at all. Show me. Prior to this conflict, who did they threaten or attempt to annex since 1991?
Regarding Ukraine, the U.S. kept provoking Russia with the non-sensical expansion of NATO since he 1990s after promising not to.At some point, the levy was going to break. And always remember, the Cuban missile crisis occurred in the 1960s as a response to the United States putting missiles in Turkey. There is a very long history here. Russia is far from innocent, but the United States has long been… Read more »
Do you honestly believe the diatribe you write? Seriously? If you do you have a future as Trump’s White House press secretary, should he be re-elected in 2024. You do realize that Putin has said on more than one occasion that Ukraine is not a real country and it’s never been a real country. You really, really, really need to stop getting your news from Russia-1, Channel One and NTV.
“Finally, Russia’s intent is not to annex all of Ukraine. It’s the Donbas, perhaps Kharkiv to the north”
Not really true. Remember at the start of the invasion, Russia went straight for the capital of Ukraine, Kyiv. If their invasion wasn’t a massive flop, they would’ve installed a puppet leader in Kyiv and that way they’d still control the parts of Ukraine they didn’t outright annex.
I do agree that if Putin is replaced there is a good chance it’s someone just as bad or worse though.
Nope. Misdirection. Coming in from Belarus shifted a huge bulk of Ukrainian troops to Kiev. In the process, it opened up the key opportunity Moscow was focused on at the time: Mariupol. They got it. That solidified future key infrastructure critical to the war.
It wasn’t misdirection at all. Russia thought they could March straight to Kyiv with little resistance like they did when they illegally invaded Crimea. They found out early on things have changed since 2014. The first few weeks of the invasion was a massively embarrassing flop for Russia. To call it “misdirection” is straight up revisionist.
BTW, Belarus is a puppet state of Russia.
Do you get the feeling that GTS believes Russia is winning?
Probably. They’re doing a lot of “Both sides are bad *wink wink* now check out this straight up Russian propaganda!”
I don’t think anyone really knows what’s going to happen and there’s also the question of how do you define winning. It is true that Russia has learned from a lot of their mistakes in the beginning of the war. Unless things have changed very recently, Ukraine is still in the probing (there’s probably a better term for that) phase of their counteroffensive so they’re testing to see where Russia’s lines are weaker.
What does this have to do with swimming?
Anna Smirnova is a Putin supporter who has attended many pro-war rallies in Moscow. She has a brother named Nikita who is currently serving in the Russian army. On Smirnova’s IG, there are many photos of her with her brother as well as other members of the Russian military.
This poor sportsmanship behaviour was her way to let Russian athletes know about atrocities Russian government does in Ukraine. That Russian athletes directly or indirectly are responsible for that as well. Don’t be surprised that because of full control by government of any information available to the population of Russian Federation a lot of people there have no idea about real nature of these “limited military operation”. I’ve been behind such “iron curtain” during Soviet Union era and do know how it works. The current disinformation system became much more sophisticated.
I have mixed feelings regarding this disqualification .I am against any political “fist raising” statements on the podium. It’s not a place for that and she should be… Read more »
Don’t remember this reaction to Yanks and British athletes…. Australia SAS also supported Iraq invasion so imagine if Thorpe was reacted to this way?? Stop discrimination