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On Friday, the press service of the International Tennis Federation (ITF) reported that the list of participants in the Olympic tournament is final, and, therefore, Veronika Kudermetova and Aslan Karatsev, initially announced by the Russian side to participate in the Games, will not go to Paris. Sports correspondent talks about the events that led to this outcome.
Initially, the composition of Russian tennis players at the Olympic Games in Paris was supposed to look 50 percent different. The selection was carried out according to the rating at the end of the French Open, and according to this criterion, Daniil Medvedev, Andrei Rublev, Karen Khachanov, Roman Safiullin for men, Lyudmila Samsonova, Daria Kasatkina, Ekaterina Alexandrova, Mirra Andreeva for women received the right to play at the Olympics. This is in singles. In pairs, according to a separate rating of this discipline, Vera Zvonareva and Elena Vesnina qualified for the Games.
However, then information began to appear that not all of these ten were eager to play for the second time in two months on the courts of the Roland Garros stadium — this is where the Olympic tournament will be held. At first, Rublev’s mother said that her son would not go to the Olympics, which was due to the desire to receive medical treatment. Then there were rumors that a number of our other players would miss the Games. As a result, on June 18, the Russian Tennis Federation announced that from those initially selected by rating, Medvedev, Safiullin, Alexandrova and Andreeva would go to Paris, and Pavel Kotov, Aslan Karatsev, Veronika Kudermetova and Diana Schneider would be added to them. The duets Medvedev/Safiullin, Kotov/Karatsev, Kudermetova/Andreeva and Alexandrova/Schneider entered the doubles category.
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“There are many problems,” explained then the refusal of some Russian tennis players from the Olympics by the President of the Russian Tennis Federation, member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Shamil Tarpishchev. “Unsuccessful performances, the struggle for points, for getting into the final tournament, injuries — all together. We are not anyone We force, on the one hand, and on the other, those who are fighting for a big rating mostly have Olympic medals. In addition, the guys are testing their abs. Some people think that they shouldn’t play, others that they should.”< br>
Tarpishchev called the same list that was eventually sent to the ITF a fusion of youth and experience. “We even made up the pairs this way — so that the experienced ones could teach the young ones,” he noted, adding that the Olympics will become a very serious school for everyone. Well, the fact that Rublev and Khachanov have Olympic medals is true: the first is the champion of Tokyo in mixed doubles, the second is the vice-champion of the same Games in singles.
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Nevertheless, in the initial list of admission of Russian athletes in a neutral status on the IOC website, all our tennis players who initially qualified for the Olympics according to the rating appeared — including four who refused. This caused some bewilderment and a wave of conversations: is Rublev going to Paris or not? It soon became clear that the issue was simply a matter of the application submission mechanism: since the FTR is not formally involved in this, the IOC publishes the names of tennis players who are admitted according to the rating by a special commission, sends them invitations, and they either accept them or not.
But the list of Russian tennis players admitted to the Olympics on the IOC website expanded and expanded — with the corresponding notes “invitation accepted” or “invitation rejected,” but could not get any closer to the desired composition. Two athletes — Kudermetova and Karatsev — never appeared in the treasured document. Official sources were silent about the reasons: the IOC responded to inquiries about these two “Ks” with a standard phrase that it does not comment on individual admission cases, and the decision is made exclusively by the commission considering compliance with neutral status.
From unofficial sources familiar with the situation, it became known that the IOC actually refused to allow these two tennis players to the Olympic Games, seeing connections with CSKA in their background. The Russian side provided additional documents in support of them, but when the International Tennis Federation published the list of participants in the Olympic tournament without Kudermetova and Karatsev, and the next day confirmed that it was final, it became clear that six Russians would compete in singles.
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In the doubles tournament of the Olympics, according to the ITF publication, Medvedev/Safiullin, Andreeva/Schneider and, after all, Vesnina, in a duet with Alexandrova, should play. If the 37-year-old tennis player really goes to Paris, these Games will be her fifth. And Elena will be the most titled Russian athlete at the Olympics — she is the champion of the 2016 Games paired with Ekaterina Makarova and the silver medalist of the 2020 Olympics in mixed doubles with Karatsev.
However, this “if” remains for now, since and in the application on the ITF website next to Vesnina’s last name there is a note TBC (subject to approval), and Elena is not yet on the IOC invite list. The source said that at the moment there are no problems with Vesnina’s admission to the Olympic Games. But initially, Kudermetova and Karatsev did not have them either: Tarpishchev reported that initially the International Tennis Federation approved the candidacies of all Russian players from the top 100, who were submitted in advance for consideration. Everything should finally become clear on Monday, when the application for the Olympic Games is closed.
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