Tiraspol, January 10. /Novosti Pridnestrovya/. In 2019, three Pridnestrovian athletes got an opportunity to participate in the Olympic Games, which will be held this year in Tokyo.
The first Pridnestrovian who received an individual right to participate in the 2020 Olympics was an athlete Lilia Fiskovich. She fulfilled the Olympic standard at one of the most prestigious and massive marathon in the world, the London Marathon. Fiskovich covered the distance in 2 hours 27 minutes and 26 sec. Thereby, she updated the national record of Moldova in the marathon.
Lilia Fiskovich is a master of sports of international class in athletics. She is also one of the ten best European marathon runners among women. It will be the second Olympics in the career of the athlete. In 2016, Lilia Fiskovich competed in Rio de Janeiro, where she became the 27th in the marathon.
Another Pridnestrovian athlete, Tatiana Salkutsan, will compete on the water lane in Tokyo. She obtained the opportunity to participate in Olympics at the World Aquatics Championships in South Korea. There, the athlete swam backstroke at a distance of 200 meters.
It should be recalled, Tatiana Salkutsan won the Youth Olympic Games in 2018. They were held in Argentina. This case was the first in history when a trainee of the Pridnestrovian sport climbed the top tier of the Olympics podium among youth.
Canoeist Kirill Shamshurin won the right to participate in the Games for the Russian team. He fulfilled the Olympic standard in canoe-pair with his partner Ilia Pervukhin at a distance of 1,000 meters.
In September 2019, Kirill Shamshurin competed at the pre-Olympic tournament in Tokyo. In canoe-single at a distance of 1,000 m, he became a bronze medalist. This can be considered a strong predicator for a good result at the Olympic Games in 2020.
At the moment, it is not known exactly whether Russia will participate in the Olympics under its own flag. According to Kirill Shamshurin, there is no court decision to remove the team from the Games. He noted that if Russia was still not allowed to participate in the Olympics, then decisions on athletes and participation would be considered individually.
It should be recalled, in December last year, the executive committee of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) suspended Russia for 4 years from all major competitions, including the Olympic Games and world championships.
The reason was the investigation according to the data from the base of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, which contains the results of studies for 2012-2015. During the investigation, the experts got this version: changes were made to the database in order to hide the positive doping tests of Russian athletes.
WADA claims to Russian sport were commented by the representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova.
“We are talking about the politicization of this issue for neglecting Russia. There is such a term as unfair competition. And here is already a dirty fight, and maybe even a war,” she said.
