The Russian athlete has had the green light by the International Athletics Federation, IAAF, to participate in the Rio Olympics without the Russian flag. The people did not flow down and does the betrayal marked.
When July 10 Darya Klishina wrote a post on Facebook to thank the IAAF for having admitted her to the Olympic Games in Brazil as an independent athlete, she could not imagine that it would have costed her the stigma of traitor and “enemy of the people.”
Klishina has appealed the IAAF after the whoe Russian athletics team was banned from the competitions, following the doping scandal. It was not the only one to do it, but so far only she and the 800-meter runner Yulja Stepanova – the athlete who sparked the “state-doping” scandal in Russia with her revelations – have been dispensed, after the federation rejected 67 applications from other Russian athletes.
The reason given by the IAAF is that Klishina lives and trains in the United States, where controls on doping are more stringent and reliable than those performed in Russia. But this has also revealed the deadly sin that costed her the stigma of shame.
Like Hitler’s collaborators
As reported by the Russian newspaper Argumenty y Fakty, the web has not forgiven Klishina of having abandoned the Russian flag. Her post on Facebook has collected many likes and praise, but also many angry reactions and comments that accuse her of having betrayed her country.
The journalist of Komsomolskaya Pravda, Dmitry Smirnov, went a little further. After posting on Twitter a fake billboard in which he ironically invites Russian athletes to do like Klishina – “Follow her example, to participate in the Olympics just get rid of the Russian flag. After all, what did Russia do for you?” –, he likened the long jumper to collaborators of the Nazis in the Soviet era. “Russian soldiers! Hot food, rest and medical care await you as prisoners of Germany,” he tweeted.
Klishina’s sin is not having decided to compete without the Russian flag, but having done so as a resident in the USA. Something hardly forgivable in Putin’s Russia.
The spokesman of the Federal Investigative Committee, the super attorney under the direct control of the Kremlin, has suggested that it is no accident. “They’re putting on a good team. Stepanova, Klishina and Grigory Rodchenkov as a coach, “he tweeted referring to the fact that also Stepanova lives in America and that Rodchenkov – the former director of the doping lab – fled to the US after the doping scandal.
Klishina tryied to justify herself: “I would like to point out that I didn’t start training in the USA with an American coach a month before this situation turned out the way it did – I have been there for three years. Therefore, I think it is wrong to criticize me and call me a traitor,” she said.
It doesn’t seem that her words made Russians change their minds.
@daniloeliatweet
The Russian athlete has had the green light by the International Athletics Federation, IAAF, to participate in the Rio Olympics without the Russian flag. The people did not flow down and does the betrayal marked.
