The Olympic champion explained why it is necessary to invite foreigners to Russia

MOSCOW, February 15, Oleg Bogatov. Holding open events in Russia competitions with a good prize fund in various sports will arouse great interest among foreign athletes, since they all love money, said two-time Olympic champion in hockey Alexander Kozhevnikov.
President of the Russian Ski Racing Federation and head coach of the national team Elena Vyalbe said on Wednesday that the All-Russian Winter Spartakiad is no different from the World Championships and Olympic Games in terms of organization and intensity of competition. And because of the good conditions, foreign participants in the World Cup stages envy the Russians.
«»For now we are stewing in our own juices, but for our skiers everything is fine, as it was before. But everything is learned by comparison. It’s great that we have so many different competitions and we have better prize money. Everything is organized very well here, «We need to attract foreigners to Russia. Because they will definitely go for money, their whole life is built on money. For us, everything is built in the Motherland, in the Fatherland, on love, and there is definitely only money,» he said Kozhevnikov.
«When we did not participate in the 1984 Olympics, we held the international competition «Friendship 1984» in the USSR. And athletes from many countries came to us. Even this scoundrel, the Englishman Sebastian Coe (now the president of the World Athletics Association — ed. We need to organize everything correctly now, and many of the strongest athletes will come to us. For example, for the upcoming Friendship Games. I just gave one option off the top of my head, but there are many of them. We have enormous potential,” added the agency’s interlocutor.

Spartakiad will end on February 18. Competitions under the 2026 Olympics program are being hosted by the Krasnodar Territory, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Tyumen Regions and the Krasnoyarsk Territory.
The World Friendship Games are planned to be held in Russia in 2024. Competitions in 33 summer Olympic and non-Olympic sports are scheduled to be held on September 15-29 in Moscow and Yekaterinburg.