The Russian Swimming Championships, which represents the primary qualification meet for the nation’s athletes for this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo, will proceed, but with a change.
Scheduled for April 3rd – April 4th at the Palace of Water Sports in Kazan, the Russian Nationals will continue without spectators, akin to what the Brazilian Federation (CBDA) revealed about its own Olympic qualifier taking place towards the end of the month.
The President of the All-Russian Swimming Federation, Vladimir Salnikov, confirmed that the competition will take place at the scheduled time, but without spectators, reads the announcement on the federation’s site dated today, Monday, March 16th.
According to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center at the time of publishing, the nation of Russia has 90 cases of coronavirus reported, with 8 deaths resulting.
You can find the list of Russian athletes eligible to compete at the 2020 Russian Swimming Championships here (in Russian).
All of the nation’s heavy hitters are expected to race, including Vlad Morozov, Yuliya Efimova, Vladislav Grinev, Andrei Minakov, Evgeny Rylov, Arina Surkova and many more Olympic hopefuls.
Interesting, since they have so few cases of COVID-19. (not because they don’t, but because they’re not testing and not being transparent).
same with Japan.
The 1st wave from China was handled immediately in Jan with border closure, return of all Chinese citizens & barring all Chinese. All this was done with China ok. ( it helps to keep good relations).
The next wave was from travellers to Italy .& now Europe . There is no evidence as of yesterday cases are coming from Russia . This is usually the 1st sign we can see that there is a strong community presence already established. The big danger is overseas based swimmers returning from USA & France . Turkey seems ok .
I think the fact that their elderly live in rural villages & city based ppl onl y visit in summer if at all… Read more »
If they have 8 deaths you can be sure that they have far far more than 90 cases.
According to jhu Corona tracker they have 0 deaths and 8 recovered.
Hopefully Yuliya drops a 1:04 and 2:19.
I hear they’re not doing drug testing to avoid contact with bodily fluid