In sport, Putin’s damage is inflicted on the brave, innocent and complicit

Russian sporting stars are tainting Vladimir Putin, but they will still pay a price for his actions.

Russian Olympic gold medallist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova posted an anti-war message on social media Picture: Getty Images

The sporting world shifted on its axis. It had to. There was no alternative but to cut away the cancer and confirm that in sport, as in war, Russia is a pariah state.

From a back-pages perspective, this appears bad news for Russia’s dominant figure skaters and cross-country skiers.

Without Russian competition, French fencers, Polish footballers, American gymnasts and various eastern European wrestlers may find that the next few months (years?) bring a bit more international success. And if tennis – which is still undecided – follows the edict of the IOC, then Daniil Medvedev has been kneecapped at the height of his career and the tripartite battle for greatest tennis player of all time will get somewhat skewed in his absence.

On a rather different scale, this was a statement released on social media by Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, the Russian tennis player and Tokyo Olympics gold medallist: “I am in complete fear, as are my friends and family. But I am not afraid to clearly state ... I am against war and violence. Personal ambition or political motives cannot justify violence.

“This takes away the future, not only from us but also from our children. I am confused and do not know how to help in this situation. I’m just an athlete who plays tennis. I am not a politician, not a public figure, I have no experience in this. I can only publicly disagree with these decisions taken and openly talk about it. Stop the violence. Stop the war.”

This was followed, later in the day, by a post from Elina Svitolina, the Ukrainian tennis player, whom Pavlyuchenkova has known and played against for almost a decade.

Svitolina said that, henceforth, or until the tennis authorities have found an acceptable position, she will refuse to play against Russian or Belarusian players, her post stressing that Russian athletes are not responsible for the invasion and then adding the following: “I wish to pay tribute to all the players, especially Russians and Belarussians, who bravely stated their position against the war.

“Their support is essential.”

I have no idea how much danger Pavlyuchenkova is putting herself in; I only know that when the TV shows citizens ... demonstrating against the war, they get manhandled into police vans and driven away. As Svitolina says, Pavlyuchenkova’s courage is commendable and also, unfortunately, exactly what Ukraine and the world needs right now.

These, our denizens of the sports pages, may be able to help nudge history in the right direction, whether they use their voice, like Pavlyuchenkova, or not. For this reason it is so clearly the correct decision to ban so many of them from the international arena. It is they who have been forced to bear the message of international isolation.

This is the curse that Vladimir Putin has placed upon a generation of elite athletes. They should never have been allowed to compete in the recent Beijing Winter Olympics, or the Tokyo Summer Olympics last year. That was the curse of their leader too.

Figure skater Kamila Valieva, 15, had a horror Winter Olympics after a positive drug test became public.

A week ago, Russia had so completely twisted another Olympics through its calculated approach to doping that its athletes were – it was broadly, though not officially, agreed – no longer welcome to participate in the Games. Now, war has driven us to the same conclusion, and finally it is official.

You may recall the Russian figure skater, Kamila Valieva, in Beijing. She was 15 years old and, when she tested positive for a performance-enhancing drug, it was discovered that she had been using three other controversial yet legal products simultaneously. Which raised the question: who was running her doping program?

It also demanded an answer, which she will never have, to this question: how good might she have been if she had been allowed to compete cleanly? As the Russians’ medal tally started spinning at those Beijing Olympics, the same question recurred: what would the score be if they were all clean? And we don’t know how many were.

All we know for sure is that in the culture in which so many Russian athletes are reared, the decisions to dope are made for them, not by them. The system denied them a clean shot at their athletic lives. Now the war has done the same. And like its doping scandals, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has swept legions of athletes along together.

As Bill Browder, the American financier and political activist, declared: “Putin needs to be isolated from within and without.” This is what the suspension of Russian athletes is seeking to achieve.

Some Russian athletes may be permitted to continue competing as independent sole survivors, unattached to their national flag, and there will be cases where they can serve to further the message and the intended isolation of Putin.

When Andrey Rublev, the Russian tennis player, writes “No war please” on a camera lens, or when Medvedev posts on social media a plea for “peace in the world”, they are tainting Putin and undermining his following.

Few Russian athletes, though, will be left with that privilege.

Thus has the sporting world changed. Putin’s damage is inflicted on the very best of his own.

The Times