Today in Sigulda, the fourth stage of the World Cup in bobsleigh and skeleton begins with the women’s skeleton competition.
False information has spread in the public space that Latvia did not allow athletes from the aggressor country Russia to the competition.
Riga councilor and former member of the Saeima Jakovs Pliners (“Stability”) writes on his “Facebook” profile that Latvia has banned Russian athletes from entering the bobsleigh World Cup. “Afraid of competition? Nationalist tricks? Afraid that bobi [Pliners nez kāpēc gan raksta – motocikli] threatens Latvia’s security? Rhetorical questions, of course,” says the pro-Russian politician. Such questions could have arisen for Pliner by getting information from the mass media of the aggressor country, because the truth is that the neutral athletes from Russia could not compete in Sigulda even if they wanted to.
We are talking about nine representatives of the aggressor country – two bobsledders and seven skeletonists, to whom the International Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (IBSF) granted the status of neutral individual athlete that week. In the competition calendar, the Sigulda stage is the first in which they could theoretically start, but the IBSF rules do not allow it and it has nothing to do with Latvia’s position or unwillingness to see representatives of the occupying country.
“They (Russians) couldn’t even apply for the Sigulda stage, because the World Cup has a quota system and the condition must be fulfilled that before that you have to participate in at least five competitions in three different tracks within two years,” Janika Judeika, general secretary of the Latvian Bobsleigh and Skeleton Federation (LBSF), explained the situation to “Latvijas Avīze”. Since Russia started the war in Ukraine in February 2022, the representatives of the aggressor country have not competed in international bobsleigh and skeleton competitions, therefore none of them have fulfilled the conditions. “For neutral athletes to be eligible to start in the World Cup, they must first accumulate the specified number of competitions in lower-level competitions. For example, skeleton athletes can do it in the Asian Cup, bobsledders in the American or European Cups and only then think about the World Cup. Basically, they cannot apply to start in the World Cup this season, because there is no longer a chance to collect the mentioned number of competitions,” said Judeika.
Russian bobsleigh and skeleton representatives do not provide such information to their media, however, the head of the federation, Anatolijs Pegov, stated that they did not try to apply for the competition in Sigulda, because Latvian legislation states that athletes with Russian passports cannot compete here. Here, too, we have entered a ditch, because the ban on aggressors established by the Sports Law of our country applies only to team sports games.
CONTEXT
On February 24, 2022, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin gave the order to invade Ukraine. Putin claimed that NATO was going to use Ukraine as a springboard for aggression against Russia, although there was no evidence for these claims. In March 2023, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Putin for the illegal deportation of Ukrainian children from the occupied territories in Ukraine.
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